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THE EVOLUTION OF QUAKER MEETING HOUSES IN NORTH AMERICA 1670—2000
Seth Beeson Hinshaw
A THESIS
In
Historic Preservation
Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in
Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
MASTER OF SCIENCE
2001
l^mAy bervisor '& Reader David G. DeLong Thomas D. Hamm Professor of Architecture College Archivist and Professor of History University of Pennsylvania Earlham College
'/^yi^u^i^ vQraduaJjB Group Chair FranEu. Matero Associate Professor of Architecture jNlvtHiiJTV OF PENNSYLVANIA Table of Contents.
List of Illustrations iv
Introduction vii
Chapter I. The English Background of Quaker Architecture 1
Liturgical Worship 1
Puritanism 3
The Rise of Quakerism 7
Early Friends Meeting Houses in England 13
Early Interiors of Friends Meeting Houses 17
Chapter II. American Friends Find a Form 22
Introduction of English Prototypes 24
The Bristol Plan in America 24
, End-Gallery Meeting Houses in America 28
Side-Gallery Meeting Houses in America 29
Simple Doubled Meeting Houses 35
The Proto-Ideal Meeting House 37
The Quaker Ideal Plan 38
Chapter HI. The Quaker Ideal Meeting House 41
Meeting House Sites 41
Exteriors of the Quaker Ideal Meeting Houses 43
Interiors of the Quaker Ideal Meeting Houses 47
Arch Street Meeting House 55
Chapter mi. The Liberal Quaker Branch (Hicksites) 57
Hicksite Use of the Quaker Ideal Plan 59
The Race Street Meeting House 62
The Center-Gabled Plan 63
Front-Gabled Meeting Houses 64
The Twentieth Century 66
The Modified Ideal (1930— 1960) 68
Purchased Residences 70
Modem Meeting Houses 70
Chapter V. The Orthodox Conservative Quaker Branch (Wilburites) 73
The Wilburite Use of the Quaker Ideal Plan 79
The Chesterfield Plan 79
Tripled Meeting Houses (1880—1900) 84
Wilbunte Modernism: Middleton (1959) 85
Chapter VI. The Pastoral Quaker Branch (Gurneyites) 87
The Gumeyite Use of the Quaker Ideal Plan (1850—1885) 87
The Late Ideal Plan (1870—1880) 90
The Front-Gabled Plan (1875—1920) 92
The Akron Plan (1895—1925) 98
Neo-Classical (1900— 1930) 100
The Pastoral Style (1925—1970) 104
The Modem Style (1970—2000) 107
Conclusion 109
Appendix: Illustrations Cited in Text 1 12
Bibliography 190
Index 195
.^''
1 ,
List of Illustrations.
Figure Name Page
1 Stillwater Meeting House, near Bamesville, Ohio 113 2 Mount Airy (North Carolina) Meeting House 113
3 Old Ship Meeting House, Hingham, Massachusetts 1 14 4 Hertford Meeting House, England 115 5 Bristol Meeting House, England 116 6 Adderbury Meeting House, England 116 7 Colthouse Meeting House, Lancashire, England 117 8 Faringdon Meeting House, Berkshire, England 118 9 Stourbridge Meeting House, Worcestershire, England 118 10 Third Haven Meeting House, near Easton, Maryland 119
1 Burlington (New Jersey) Meeting House 119 12 Salem (Massachusetts) Meeting House 120 13 The Great Meeting House, Newport, Rhode Island 121 14 Wilmington (Delaware) Meeting House 122 15 Charleston (South Carolina) Meeting House 122 16 The Bank Meeting House, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 123 17 Pine Street Meeting House, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 123 18 Sadsbury Meeting House, Lancaster Co., Pennsylvania 124 19 The Keithian Meeting House, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 124 20 Little Egg Harbor Meeting House, Tuckertown, New Jersey 125 21 Flushing (New York) Meeting House 125 22 Cecil Meeting House, Cecil Co., Maryland 126 23 Merion (Pennsylvania) Meeting House 126 24 Radnor (Pennsylvania) Meeting House 127 25 Haddonfield (New Jersey) Meeting House 127 26 The Greater Meeting House, Philadelphia, Permsylvania 128 27 Springfield (Pennsylvania) Meeting House 128 28 Hardwick (New Jersey) Meeting House 129 29 South River Meeting House, Lynchburg, Virginia 129 30 Cain Meeting House, near Thomdale, Pennsylvania 130 31 Exeter Meeting House, near Reading, Pennsylvania 130 32 Chestnut Street Meeting House, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 131 33 Horse Sheds at Horsham Meeting House, Montgomery Co. Pennsylvania 131 34 Diagram of the Cain Meeting Property 132 35 Spiceland (Indiana) Meeting House 132 36 Norristown (Pennsylvania) Meeting House 133 37 Sandwich (Massachusetts) Meeting House 133 38 North Pembroke (Massachusetts) Meeting House 134 39 Twelfth Street Meeting House, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 134 40 Winona (Ohio) Meeting House (Conservative) 135 41 Poplar Ridge (New York) Meeting House (Primitive) 135 42 Orchard Park (New York) Meeting House 136 43 Architect's Sketch of the Arch Street Meeting House, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 137 44 Arch Street Meeting House, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 137
45 North Carolina Yearly Meeting House, New Garden, North Carolina 138 46 Indiana Yearly Meeting House, Richmond, Indiana 138 47 Ohio Yearly Meeting House, Mount Pleasant, Ohio 139 48 Ohio Yearly Meeting House, Mount Pleasant, Ohio interior 139 49 West Meeting House (Hicksite), near Sebring, Ohio 140 50 Cherry Street Meeting House, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 140 51 Longwood Meeting House, Chester Co., Pennsylvania 141 52 Race Street Meeting House, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 141 53 Race Street Meeting House, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, sketch c. 1860... 142
54 St. George's Methodist Church House, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 142 55 Indiana Yearly Meeting House, Richmond, Indiana (Hicksite) 143 56 West Chester (Pennsylvania) Meeting House (Hicksite) 143 57 Fair Hill Meeting House, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 144 58 Reading (Pennsylvania) Meeting House 144 59 West Grove (Pennsylvania) Meeting House (Hicksite) 145 60 Yardley (Pennsylvania) Meeting House 145 61 Short Creek Meeting House, near Emerson, Ohio (Hicksite) 146 62 Plainfield Meeting House, east of Bamesville, Ohio (Hicksite) 146 63 Chestnut Hill Meeting House, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 147 64 Harrisburg (Pennsylvania) Meeting House 147 65 Kennett Square (Pennsylvania) Meeting House 148 66 Raleigh (North Carolina) Meeting House 148 67 North Meadow Meeting House, Indianapolis, Indiana 149 68 Atlanta (Georgia) Meeting House 149 69 Orange Grove Meeting House, Pasadena, California 150 70 Phoeni.x (Arizona) Meeting House 150 71 Southampton (Pennsylvania) Meeting House 151 72 Live Oak Meeting House, Houston, Te.\as 152
73 Richland Meeting House (Orthodox), near Quaker City, Ohio 1 53 74 Nottingham & Little Britain Meeting House,
Lancaster Co., Pennsylvania (Primitive) 1 53 75 Chesterfield (New Jersey) Meeting House (Orthodox) 154 76 Chesterfield (Ohio) Meeting House (Wilburite) 154 77 West Branch (Iowa) Meeting House (Conservative) 155 78 West Branch (Iowa) Meeting House (Gumeyite) 155 79 Hickory Grove (Iowa) Meeting House 156 80 Salem (Ohio) Meeting House (Wilburite) 157 81 West Grove (North Carolina) Meeting House 158 82 West Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) Meeting House 158 83 West Grove (Pennsylvania) Meeting House (Orthodox) 159 84 Coatesville (Pennsylvania) Meeting House (Orthodox) 159 85 Stavanger (Iowa) Meeting House (Conservative) 160 86 Jacksonville (New York) Meeting House (Primitive) 160 87 Middleton Meeting House, Columbiana Co., Ohio 161 88 Ridge Meeting House, south of Bamesville, Ohio 161 89 Pasadena (California) Meeting House (Wilburite) 162 90 Middleton Meeting House, Columbiana Co., Ohio 163 91 Damascus (Ohio) Meeting House (Gurneyite) 164 92 Upper Springfield Meeting House, Damascus, Ohio (Wilburite) 164 93 New Garden Meeting House, near Fountain City, Indiana 165
71
94 Spiceland (Indiana) Meeting House 165 95 North Carolina Yearly Meeting House, High Point, North Carolina 166 96 Kansas Yearly Meeting House, Lawrence, Kansas 166 97 Providence Meeting House, Randolph Co., North Carolina 167 98 Ohio Yearly Meeting House, Damascus, Ohio 168 99 Indiana Yearly Meeting House, Richmond, Indiana 168 100 Eutaw Street Meeting House, Baltimore, Maryland 169 101 Bethany (North Carolina) Meeting House 170 102 Norristown (Pennsylvania) Meeting House (Orthodox) 170 103 Buena Vista (Indiana) Meeting House 171 104 West Milton (Ohio) Meeting House 171 105 Vandalia (Michigan) Meeting House 172 106 South Wabash (Indiana) Meeting House 172 107 West River Meeting House, near Economy, Indiana 173 108 Farmland (Indiana) Meeting House 173 109 Jonesboro (Indiana) Meeting House 174 110 Winchester (Indiana) Meeting House 175
1 1 Oregon Yearly Meeting House 176 176 1 12 Whittier (California) Meeting House 113 White River Meeting House, near Winchester, Indiana 177
1 14 Farmland (Indiana) Meeting House 177
1 15 High Point (North Carolina) Meeting House 178 178 1 16 Seattle (Washington) Meeting House
1 1 1 Asheboro Street Meeting House, Greensboro, North Carolina 79 118 West Richmond (Indiana) Meeting House 179 180 1 19 New Casde (Indiana) Meeting House 120 Winston-Salem (North Carolina) Meeting House 180 121 Oskaloosa (Iowa) Meeting House 181 122 Archdale (North Carolina) Meeting House 181
1 82 1 23 Cane Creek Meeting House, near Snow Camp, North Carolina 124 Pine Hill Meeting House, Surry Co., North Carolina 183 125 Bethel Meeting House, Randolph Co., North Carolina 183 126 Asheboro (North Carolina) Meeting House 184 127 Howland Meeting House, Warren, Ohio 185 128 Salem Southeast Meeting House, Salem, Ohio 185 129 Salem First Friends Meeting House, Salem, Ohio 186 130 Alliance (Ohio) Meeting House 186 131 Berkeley (California) Meeting House 187 132 Ramona Park (California) Meeting House 187 133 Pueblo (California) Meeting House 188 134 South Fork Meeting House, near Snow Camp, North Carolina 188 135 Winona (Ohio) Meeting House (Evangelical) 189 136 Canton (Ohio) Meeting House 189
Introduction.
Situated upon a hill just east of Bamesville, Ohio, is a large two-story brick
building to attend building. Once every year Quakers from around the world travel to this
Ohio Yearly Meeting and participate in a four-day business meeting of the Society of
Friends. Although the Stillwater Meeting House is only 123 years old, it is a monument to a movement by Quakers to conserve Quaker traditions.
The Stillwater Meeting House (Figure 1) has meaning which transcends those
during gathered inside. Its shape reflects a particular building type developed by Quakers
building is the eighteenth century, a type which was becoming obsolete by 1878. The
simple and plain, with nothing to distract an occupant from a consideration of key Quaker
In a principle: God speaks to every individual and gives a yearning to be molded by Him.
fast-paced world of e-mail and cellular phones, the Stillwater Meeting House suggests to
those who enter that each human life should focus on unchanging, timeless principles.
The architecture of any particular Friends meeting house captures the values of
in view, always the Friends who built it. G. Edwin Brumbaugh wrote: "Architecture, my
assumes a form appropriate to the thinking of the people who produced it."' The
architecture of Stillwater reflects the conservative Quaker sentiment at the time of its
there today. construction more cleariy than it reflects the sentiments of those who gather
Indeed, Stillwater Friends Meeting today is considered to be the most liberal meeting of
the Conservative Friends.
A more striking example of this shift in sentiment by the users is the Mount Airy
(North Carolina) Meeting House (Figure 2), which was constructed in 1904 according to
' PA: Old York Quoted in H. Mather Lippincott, Quaker Meeting Houses and a Little Humor (Jenkintown Road Publishing Co., 1952), p. 1. vu
the early twentieth the Akron Plan (the favorite style of the revivalist ministers of
a bastion of the century). As the century progressed, however. Mount Airy became modernist movement in North Carolina. If Mount Airy Friends needed to construct a new meeting house today for some reason, they would probably construct one which looks
Quaker folkways. much like Stillwater and thereby restate their connection to earlier
Every Friends meeting house conveys meaning through its architecture. A Friends
meeting house which incorporates steeples, Gothic arches, and pulpits makes a statement
always focus on the about the theology of its builders; the axes in these buildings almost
religious pulpit and emphasize that in worship one person is the disseminator of
traditional knowledge to the attenders. By the same token, a meeting house with the more
doubled plan and interior benches arranged in a square makes a theological statement
because the axes usually have been shifted to focus on the people gathered; these
meetings generally do not emphasize doctrine. Each meeting house makes a statement
about how people interact with God, about the meaning of worship, and about the value
of recognizing spiritual gifts a person might have.
This thesis proposes to illustrate the themes mentioned above as they have been
2000. interpreted through the architecture of Quakers in the United States fi-om 1670 to
in the seventeenth The first chapter explores the background of Quakerism in England
meeting house style in North century as it relates to architecture. The search for an ideal
gained acceptance, America is the topic of Chapter Two. Once an ideal Quaker style had
the Quaker local conditions and traditions found expression during the prevalence of
illustrate changes in Ideal style, as is described in Chapter Three. The next three chapters
meeting house architecture by the three great Quaker traditions which emerged from
divisions in the mid-nineteenth century: the Hicksites (Chapter Four), the Wilburites
(Chapter Five), and the Gumeyites (Chapter Six).
While all Quaker historians would agree that Quaker architecture reflects Quaker
theology, it is remarkable that the subject has received so little attention. On many
occasions historians of Quakerism have touched upon the architectural changes
introduced into Quaker meeting houses during the nineteenth century, but these references have been brief and scattered.' The only work offering an historical analysis of the evolution of the architectural styles of Friends meeting houses in the United States is the master's thesis of Damon Tvaryanas, who investigated the meeting houses constructed in New Jersey. Treatises on Quaker architecture generally fall into two camps: picture books and inventories.
John Russell Hayes produced the first picture book of Quaker architecture. His
1909 book'* included some poems he had written, interspersed with cuts of fifty Hicksite meeting houses. The book was very popular, so Hayes expanded the number of illustrated meeting houses to 109 when he printed a second edition in 1911. Another example of
this genre is the book Quaker Ways by Ruth Bonner, which provides images of many meeting houses in active use at the time, primarily located in the Delaware Valley.*^
^ For example, Frederick B. Tolles allotted only a few sentences to Quaker architecture in his Quakers and
the Atlantic Culture (NYC: Macmillan Co., 1960), p. 82. He ended with the following conclusion: "None
of the eighteenth century Philadelphia meetinghouses is still standing, except that of the schismatic Free
Quakers, but the Arch Street Meetinghouse, built in 1804, is fiilly representative of the type," p. 82. [It is
interesting that he would state that the Arch Street Meeting House is representative of seventeenth century
Friends meting houses, when in fact it deviated from the standard Quaker meeting house type in several ways (as will be discussed later).] An article on Quaker architecture by Christopher Densmore in Quaker Crosscurrents: Three Hundred Years of Friends in the New York Yearly Meetings (Syracuse NY: Syracuse University Press, 1995), is only two pages long (pp. 45-47). ' Damon Tvaryanas, "The New Jersey Quaker Meeting House: A Typology and Inventory," Master's thesis in Historic Preservation at the University of Pennsylvania, 1993.
"* J. Russell Hayes, Old Meeting-Houses: With over Fifty Illustrations (Philadelphia: Biddle Press, 1909).
* J. Russell Hayes, Old Quaker Meeting-Houses (Philadelphia: Biddle Press, 1911). ^ Ruth E. Bonner, Quaker Ways: Pictures of Meeting-Houses in Current Middle-Atlantic America (Kutztown PA: Kutztown Publishing Co., Inc., 1978).
Photographic inventories of meeting houses appeared relatively recently. During
a commemorative the sesquicentennial of Ohio Yearly Meeting (Damascus) in 1962,
Friends publication included photographs of all their meeting houses in use at that time.
is now a collector's item. North of all branches expressed interest in the book, which
included Carolina Yearly Meeting (FUM) printed a commemorative book in 1972 which
and some cuts of cuts and brief histories of all its meeting houses in use at the time
two yearly previous meeting houses.^ hi the last decade of the twentieth century, meetings produced books with an exhaustive inventory of their meeting houses: Indiana
books endeavor to provide in 1996^ and Britain in 1999.'^ Both of these two latter
used Friends historical information on every different meeting house which was by
throughout the history of the yearly meeting.
emerged Quakers place little emphasis on sacred architectural space. Quakerism
of great religious as a denomination in the mid-seventeenth century, at a time
experimentation. The traditional Catholic basilica focused on the liturgy and used
ornamentation to convey biblical stories. The Catholics placed a great emphasis upon
Puritans rejected the their religious buildings, which they called "churches." The Enghsh
paradigm. They Catholic worldview and developed an architecture to promote their new
emphasized the Bible and sought to "purify" Anglicanism of its Catholic vestiges.
"meeting Puritans rejected the use of the word "church" for buildings and designed
houses" which were stripped of all traces of Catholicism. The congregation sat in a
^ Quaker Sesqui-Centemial 1812—1962 (Damascus OH: Ohio Yearly Meeting [Damascus], 1962). After assuming a new name, this body of Friends printed an updated version in 1987. * (Greensboro NC: North Seth B. and Mary E. Hinshaw, eds., Carolina Quakers: Tercentenary 1672—1972 Carolina Yearly Meeting, 1972). ' 175'" Anniversary History Indiana Gregory P. Hinshaw, Indiana Friends Heritage 1821—1996: The of Yearly Meeting ofFriends (Quakers) (Richmond IN: Indiana Yearly Meeting, 1996). '" Society, 1999). David M. Butler, The Quaker Meeting Houses of Britain (London: Friends Historical
upon square building, clustered around a raised pulpit from which the pastor expounded
"elect." Early Friends scriptural passages, setting forth the doctrine and lifestyle of the
Puritan terminology. rejected much of the doctrine of the Puritans, but they adapted much
they began to In addition, early Friends gleaned some Puritan architectural ideas when seek an architectural mode to suit their own needs.
Although Quakers have traditionally rejected the idea of sacred architectural
produce books to space, they value their meeting houses. Local meetings often
meetings commemorate their meeting houses, and (as mentioned before) several yearly have published books with photographic inventories. Most meetings have appointed a
the most committee of members to fulfill maintenance oversight responsibilities, often
time-consuming appointment, and often granted the largest line item in the budget. Many
meetings offer historical tours, almost always using the architecture of their meeting
presentations often house to focus attention on the outlook of the local meeting; these
revolve around issues of steeples and pulpits.
Preservationists have also recognized the historical and cultural value of Friends
meeting houses. A major factor in this recognition is that many meeting houses are the
listed on the oldest building in the local community. Several of these buildings have been
Peimsylvania) or National Register (e.g., Goshen Orthodox and Hicksite, Chester County,
have been designated National Historical Landmarks (e.g., Merion, Pennsylvania). Many
other Friends meeting houses have been moved to historical parks, where they are used to
in Ohio). interpret local history (South River and Coal Creek in Iowa, Caesar's Creek
Others are owned and maintained by historical societies (Mount Pleasant, Ohio, and
Newport, Rhode Island).
One element in the significance of each Friends meeting house is its historical
context, but the lack of an historical overview of Quaker architecture has hindered an
interpretation of context. West Milton Friends Meeting House in Indiana Yearly Meeting
(Figure 104) has little architectural significance of itself It is only when we recognize
that West Milton was the first Friends meeting house to be constructed with a full steeple
and a conscious rejection of many Quaker traditions (and corresponding acceptance of
standard Protestant traditions) that its significance is realized.
The greatest challenge in writing a treatise on a comparatively virgin topic is the
identification of the most significant elements of the subject. For most historical topics,
prior research has identified much of the factual significance, and later historians adjust
the significance as the facts become better known. Most Quakers identify significance
with the Quaker Ideal style. Quakers of all branches assume that the twentieth century
evolution of Friends meeting houses is not significant. These two understandings promote
antiquarianism and hinder the analysis of an historical topic. I have attempted to discuss
the broad architectural movements within North American Quakerism without
identifying a particular building (for example) as the first of its type unless there is clear
supporting evidence. It is always possible that a key building was missed, overlooked, or
not recognized for its due significance.
A secondary challenge is the issue of dates. There are differences of opinion about
the dates of some key buildings (such as Merion and Cain, both in Pennsylvania), and in
other cases no primary documentation exists to idenfify the date of construction. Few
historians have investigated the architectural history of local Quakerism, meaning there is
a lack of documented dates for the majority of meeting houses. Some primary source
,. material exists to identify more precisely the dates of construction or alterations, but the
outside the research necessary to compile a comprehensive hst of such dates falls
illustrations of parameters of this thesis. Since I am attempting to produce a chronology, undated buildings became less suitable in my analysis. As a result, access to illustrations
analysis to a and the availability of dates have somewhat restricted the data used in this broad band of Quaker settlement from the Delaware Valley and North Carolina through
Ohio and Indiana.
The terminology used in this paper for architectural styles has been developed
the religious primarily to help explain the use of a particular type by Quakers. Many of
architectural styles do not seem to have names, and in general there has been a paucity of
investigation into the development of religious architecture in the United States. The
building style with a style commonly known as "Colonial Revival" is an example of a
poorly selected name, since no buildings of this type were constructed before the
(or twentieth century. These buildings incorporate some pseudo-colonial elements
architectural quotations), but the form and function of this building type reflect twentieth
century Quaker events. This paper assigns the name "Pastoral Style" to this particular
building type, which helps to understand its use by pastoral Quakers but not its use by
other denominations.
The author would like to thank the many people who have aided in research for
the Historic this thesis. They include his thesis advisor. Dr. David DeLong of
Preservation Department at the University of Pennsylvania; his reader, Thomas Hamm,
Archivist of Earlham College; Gwen Erickson of Guilford College; Stan Terhune of
Malone College; and many others who have aided in locating and visiting significant
meeting houses, including John Oliver, Paul Rodebaugh, Margaret Starbuck, and Mary
Lavoie Strode. Among National Park Service employees who have aided are Catherine
' is WilHams, Houses God: ' One of the best monographs on American religious architecture Peter W. of As Region. Religion, and Architecture in the United States (Urbana IL: University of Ilhnois Press, 1999). architecture on a regional basis. Even the title states, the book analyzes the developments in religious Williams does not assign labels to some of the architectural styles, however. xiii and Bill Bolger. Special thanks go to the author's wife BJ Hinshaw for her help and guidance throughout the progress of this work and to her parents Charles and Carol
Jamieson for their many helpful comments.
Chapter I.
The English Background of Quaker Architecture
The seventeenth century was a time of unprecedented religious experimentation in
England. One of the goals of all religious groups in England was the effort to recapture ancient Christianity, which an overwhelming majority of English religious thinkers
associated with a reform of Catholicism. The spectrum of reform ranged from Anglicans
seeking minor reforms, to Puritans seeking more significant reforms, to Quakers seeking
the most significant reform. Intolerance of things Catholic intensified until mid-century,
permeating much of the religious debate, and subsided somewhat thereafter.
Liturgical Worship
At the dawn of the seventeenth century, the Anglican Church had existed less than
facilitate a century. It was founded as an entity separate from Catholicism in order to the
domestic wishes of King Henry VIII. The Act of Supremacy in 1534 declared the King to
be "the only supreme head in earth of the Church of England," thereby formalizing the
break with Rome. Over time the king delegated many of his religious responsibilities to
the Archbishop of Canterbury rather than meddling in religious affairs himself A
willingness to alter traditions inherited from Catholicism was one of the sixteenth century
' A good brief history of the seventeenth century in England is Christopher Hill, The Century of Revolution 1603—1714 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1980).
1 themes of Anglicanism, although few changes actually materialized before the seventeenth century.
Anglican worship of the early seventeenth century represented a continuation of the liturgical style of worship introduced into England by Catholicism. The service
consisted of the following elements in succession: matins, the litany, the ante-
communion, and either a sermon or communion. Much of the activity was outlined in the
Prayer Book or the Canons of 1604, including prayer texts to be recited on certain days,
decoration of the communion table, and use of ceremonies. Anglican leaders maintained
the importance of holy days, sacred music, and veneration of saints. The Archbishop of
Canterbury, William Laud (1633— 1645), re-introduced some Catholic practices which
had been rejected during the prior century, including kneeling during communion and the
reading of the ante-communion at the altar.
New Anglican religious construction of the first decades of the seventeenth
century reflected shifts in its theology. The standard Gothic style of a basilica with two
side-aisles, intersected by a transept, was traditionally associated with Christian worship.
The interiors of these buildings were richly decorated with paintings, stained glass, and
sculptures. However, the English Reformation modified Gothic architecture by placing
less emphasis on the chancel, producing a more rectangular shape (e.g., Longley,
- Williston Walker, A History of the Christian Church (NYC: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1945), pp. 401-415 outlines the major events of the English Reformation. ^ Horton Davies, Worship and Theology in England from Andrewes to Baxter and Fox. 1603—1690
(Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975), p. 336.
Shropshire). They also began to place more emphasis upon the pulpit and sermon; in many cases, the priest conducted the service from a point inside the nave.
Advocates of the "high church" attempted to renev/ old directions which were challenged or altered by English Protestants. Laud in particular opposed the movement to direct emphasis away from the liturgy, and he encouraged a renewed interest in Gothic architecture as a means of emphasizing religious continuity with the Middle Ages.
Anglican religious architecture began to express more Gothic details, taking advantage of the remaining Gothic masons. This architectural movement has been called the Laudian
Revival; some historians have also called it "Gothic Survival" due to its perseverance in the face of increasing opposition from Protestants who associated Gothic architecture with Catholicism.^
Puritanism
Many English religious thinkers sought to "purify" the Church. The goal of the
Puritans was to eliminate Catholic influences and replace them with practices found in
the New Testament. The radical changes introduced by the Puritans can be classified into
three categories: a new world view, a new understanding of worship, and the association
of immateriality with spirituality.
'' Alastair Service, The Buildings of Britain: Tudor and Jacobean (London, England: Barrie & Jenkins, England: 1982), pp. 115-117; John Summerson, Architecture in Britain, 1530—1830 (Harmondsworth,
Penguin Books, 1983), p. 174.
' Survival and Davies, pp. 31-40; Summerson, p. 174; Service, pp. 117-118; Howard Colvin, "Gothic Gothick Revival," in English Architectural History (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 1 999), p. 2 1 8.
The Puritan worid view consisted of a new paradigm of the Church based upon the use of words in Scripture. Puritan leaders rejected the CathoHc teachings of salvation by participation in religious service. Rather, Puritans saw salvation as a gift of grace by
God to the Elect. The identifying mark of the Elect was that they sought to live their lives in complete adherence to the dictates of Scripture. Puritans also rejected the Catholic notion of recognizing a few deceased people as saints to whom people could pray for help. Instead, the Puritans looked to the New Testament usage of the Greek word hagios
(saint), which was applied to living Christians gathered out of the world. In addition,
Puritans rejected the Catholic use the term church to describe a sacred building, since the equivalent Greek word ecclesia means a group of people (not a building). Deprived of a word to denote their houses of worship, Puritans began to call them meeting houses.
Puritans believed that no piece of ground was more or less holy than any other, since they believed that Jesus was present whenever two or more were gathered in His name.
The core of the wrangling between Anglicans and Puritans was their different
understandings of the focus of worship, which began over differing understandings of
communion. Catholics traditionally emphasized the wine and wafer and placed the
communion table against the east wall in front of the congregation. The Puritans believed
that the wine and wafer were only symbols of the blood and body of Jesus, rather than
His substantiated body. Religious forms associated with this ritual were less significant
for Puritans, who felt that the key to worship was exposition of Scripture. The display
* Davies, 202-203, 216; Williams, p. 5. Puritan congregations in New England and their instiUitional descendants retained the term meeting Itouse until the early nineteenth century; since that time, many congregations have used the term church to refer to their building. table was a secondary piece of furniture which could be relocated for convenience. Over time, the Puritans came to believe that the liturgy emerged during the fourth century when Christianity was defiled by the introduction of new forms by the bishop of Rome.
Since the known forms of worship were not "original," Puritan leaders examined every aspect of liturgical worship. Puritans rejected the Prayer Book because Jesus spoke against recited prayer; furthermore, Puritans believed that the Holy Ghost led people to pray appropriately. Many aspects of Catholic worship disappeared, including processions and scheduled kneeling.^
The third Puritan idea relevant to a discussion of architecture is their insistence that immateriality reflects spirituality. Puritans rejected the Anglican idea that God would reach people through iconography and insisted that God reached people through scriptural exposition. Furthermore, Puritans believed the Second Commandment forbade representations of God and humans. While Anglicans believed that painters and sculptors could be inspired to produce works of art which helped people spiritually, Puritans believed that these items distracted people's attention away from hearing exposition and
therefore were not suitable for use in a meeting house.
Puritan architecture reflected their spiritual understandings. During the English
Civil War, Puritan ministers occupied the former Anglican offices and led the worship
services. Although architectural historian Alastair Service has called the Gothic Survival
style "a watered-down Gothic," it was still too Catholic for the Puritans. They often
' Timothy Mowl and Brian Eamshaw, Architecture Without Kings: The Rise of Puritan Classicism Under Cromwell (Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 1995), pp. 7-8; Davies, 191,216.
^Davies, pp. 200-213. eliminated religious imagery and statues from religious buildings as a means of sustaining their new focus and exhibiting their intolerance of things Catholic. Since the
Puritans valued hearing exposition of Scripture, they constructed large two- and three- tiered pulpits. Puritan religious interiors reflected their view of Scripture: they were simple, unomamented, and dignified.
The Puritan understanding of interior space is illustrated by Christ Church,
Plymouth, and Guyhim Chapel, Cambridgeshire. Christ Church, Plymouth, was still under construction when the Puritans erased the west-to-east ritual axis. They constructed
a large pulpit in the center which dominated the room, then added galleries on all four
sides for attenders. At Guyhim Chapel, the wooden benches were located close together
to eliminate congregational kneeling (which Puritans considered to be an empty Catholic
practice). The unadorned interior of Guyhim illustrates the Puritan rejection of color,
which they felt distracted people from the sermon.
Post-Toleration Puritan meeting houses have some common features shared by
early English Quakers and Baptists. Since much Puritan architecture has disappeared, an
exact chronology of which came first is difficult to determine. Davies describes Puritan
meeting houses as being "a square with a double row of windows looking like a rather
squat and wholly staid domestic building." While he also states that Puritans rejected
steeples, towers and cupolas, the only surviving seventeenth century Puritan meeting
house in America has a cupola. This building, the Old Ship Meeting House in Hingham,
Massachusetts (Figure 3), is a two-story building with a hipped roof leading to a widow's
Davies, pp. 60-61; Service, p. 111. °Mowl,pp. 12,15-17 walk, where a cupola with a bell is found. The focus of the interior was the pulpit; while the building has seen many alterations it maintains its Puritan outlines.
Following the Restoration in 1660, English religious architecture embarked upon a new direction. This re-orientation of thought was strengthened following the London fire of 1666 and the appointment of Christopher Wren as Surveyor-General. Wren was able to strike a new course transcending the pre-Commonwealth debates. His new designs incorporated aspects of both the Laudian and Puritan perspectives while introducing some innovations of his own. He re-introduced verticality, ornamentation, and some simple color schemes from the Laudians, and he maintained the use of the open interiors and prominent pulpits of the Puritans. Among his personal contributions were the introduction of organs and the re-introduction of classical elements formerly associated with Inigo Jones. Wren's new synthesis in England opened the way for the
English Baroque.
The Rise of Quakerism
Quakerism became a major religious force in England during the 1650s and
spread throughout the English-speaking worid by itinerant preachers led by the "founder"
of Quakerism, George Fox. Just as Puritanism had challenged the Anglican worid,
Quakerism challenged the Puritan world. The basic Quaker message dealt with three
" Davies, pp. 60-61; Williams, p. 8 '" John B. Nellist, British Architecture and Its Background (London: Macmillan & Co., 1967), pp. 198-209 major issues: the spiritual nature of the New Covenant, the tension between inward and outward faith, and the silence of the flesh.
Quakers emphasized the spiritual nature of the New Covenant. They believed that
a priest. This belief, God is accessible to humans without the need of a third party such as called the doctrine of immediate revelation, was a central element in the Quaker understanding of worship. Quakers believed that Jesus was at work among them through the Holy Ghost to help people discover God's will for them. Eariy Quakers claimed that one could not perform true religious service without a prompting from the Holy Ghost and that each person needed to await a leading before undertaking spiritual labors. They thus rejected the professional clergy and appointed prayers, singing, or speaking.
'^ historians are in Davies, pp. 511-513. Davies selected these three basic issues. Although non-Quaker general agreement about the nature of early Quakerism, Quaker historians differ vehemently about it. The standard Orthodox text is Charles Evans, Friends in the Seventeenth Century (Philadelphia: Friends Book
Store, 1885), which postulates that Quakerism is a set of beliefs set forth during the seventeenth century which can be used to identify the "true" Quakers of any historical period. Following the Manchester Conference, William C. Braithwaite produced a two-volume history of early Quakerism: The Beginnings of Quakerism (Macmillan & Co., 1912) and The Second Period of Quakerism (Macmillan & Co., 1919). Braithwaite sought to place early Quakers in the context of mystical religion. Allen C. Thomas produced an
early Gumeyite treatise on Quakerism with Richard H. Thomas entitled A History of Friends in America (Philadelphia: The John C. Winston Co., 1930), which used Quaker history to show the consistency of Gumeyite innovations with early Friends. This attempt to reconcile early Friends with modem mnovations Rapids MI: William B. reached its zenith with Walter R. Williams, The Rich Heritage of Quakerism (Grand Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1962), which portrayed George Fox as a travelling Protestant evangelist. Work by Lewis Benson led to a rethinking of George Fox, prompting Hugh Barbour's The Quakers in Puritan England (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 1964) which reaffirmed the connection between early Quakers and Puritans. One of the best recent attempts to understand the nature of early Quakerism is John
Punshon's Portrait in Grey: A Short History of the Quakers (London: Quaker Home Service, 1984). The best source for a secular version of early Quakerism is Christopher Hill's The World Turned Upside Down (Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1975). There are many aspects of Quakerism which are not related to
architecture and have not been developed in this paper.
''' Proposition his Davies, p. 511; Robert Barclay, "Concerning Immediate Revelation," the second of An Apologyfor the True Christian Divinity (Ury, Scotland: 1675).
The second Quaker emphasis was the difference between inward and outward
faith. Quakers quoted the words of Jesus that humans are defiled by their inward state and beHeved that the Light of Christ helped to illuminate the conscience to bring a person into true Christianity. This inward work of the Light to identify and reprove sin and cleanse the consciousness would lead to a state of spiritual maturity (called perfection in the parlance of the day). Because real change in a person's life came through a change of
heart, Quakers early developed a distinction between those who professed the truth and
those who possessed it. Professors tended to be those Christians who called for faithful
observance of outward forms which had little or no power to revolutionize the inward
state. As a result, Quakers believed that an initial decision to repent of old ways and be
led immediately by the Light of Christ was a prerequisite to spiritual baptism and
communion. With the true baptism and communion now available, the shadowy forms of
the outward were no longer necessary. The decision to follow the inward promptings of
the Light of Christ led people out of the apostacy of their religious upbringing and into
sanctification and a life of integrity.
The third distinctive Quaker belief was the idea of the silence of the flesh. God
appeared to Elijah as a still, soft voice, so Quakers believed that people needed to quieten
their minds in order to hear God. Quakers also pointed to other scriptural references of
silence before God, such as when Moses called upon the Hebrews to "stand still and see
the salvation of God." The search for true knowledge of God required a rejection of
intellectual notions and words which did not reach the inward state of the heart. Since
'^ Davies, pp. 51 1, 526; Barclay, Proposirions 6-8, 12, and 13. The term inner light, which came into vogue
in the late nineteenth century, was rarely used in the seventeenth century.
Paul stated that the flesh wars against the spirit, Quakers believed that they needed to silence fleshly desires, which were a major source of sin.
Quaker worship was based upon silence. Those gathered would sit in silence until someone responded to a stirring to speak; after the person was finished, the worship would continue in silence until someone else responded to a prompting to speak. During the seventeenth century, these leadings often resulted in messages lasting an hour or
meeting. more, so it would be erroneous to believe that silence was the goal of the
Leadings to speak in meeting varied. One of the most common types of ministry was the sharing of an "opening." When a new understanding of a Scripture was revealed to someone, the passage was said to have been "opened." During the early years of
Quakerism there was also great deal of singing. Thomas and Elizabeth Holme were recognized in their day as important singing Quakers, and George Fox wrote that early
Friends accepted singing resulting from a direct prompting from the Lord. Other forms of
speaking included prayer and testimonies.
While Quaker worship seemed to be radical at the time, Quakers insisted that it
was the form true Christians had used from the beginning, hi the only description of
worship in the New Testament, Paul wrote:
How is it then, brethren, when ye come together, every one of you hath a
psalm, hath a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath a revelation? Let all things be
"* Davies, p. 513; Barclay, propositions ten and eleven; Richard Bauman, Let Your Words Be Few: Symbolism of Speaking and Silence Among Seventeenth Century Quakers (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 22-27. " Davies, p. 517. One of the more interesting aspects of eady Quaker worship was that often people
listening to George Fox speak would have a sense of what he was about to say (Bauman, p. 78); this phenomenon has continued throughout the history of Quakerism.
10
'
let the other done unto edifying. . . Let the prophets speak two or three, and
judge. If any thing be revealed to another that sitteth by, let the first hold
his peace, for ye may all prophesy one by one, that all may learn, and all
may be comforted.
This type of participatory worship was not in vogue in any of the Christian groups existing at the founding of Quakerism. Fox tried on several occasions to follow the messages of Anglican priests with a prophecy of his own, and was often thrown physically out of the building. So while many people sought to follow the Bible literally, they were not willing to re-examine their preferred forms of worship.
Quakers shared much in common with Puritans. Both groups investigated the scriptural use of terms and stripped away newer connotations which did not match the
scriptural use. Both groups used the term church to describe a gathering of people and the term meeting house to describe a building for worship. Quakers and Puritans shared new
uses of some words to reflect the Greek or Hebrew meanings, such as the words minister
(instead oi priest), saint and sanctify. Both groups rejected outward ornamentation in
favor of simplicity of life, rejecting the arts, vestments, and marriage rings. Both groups
rejected anything coimected to Catholic worship: holy days, the liturgy, and veneration of
the saints. When some Puritans objected to the derivation of names for the months and
days of the week, proposing instead to use numerical names (as found in the Hebrew and
Greek), Quakers adopted it so enthusiastically that it soon became intertwined with the
'^ identity of Quakerism.
'* 1 Corinthians 14:26, 29-30.
" Davies, pp. 532.
11
However, Quakers differed from the Puritans in significant ways. Most of these differences were based upon different understandings of how God operated during worship. Puritans believed that God worked through scriptural exposition, while Quakers believed that God worked through His presence. Because spiritual worship meant waiting for a prompting to speak, Quakers rejected prepared sermons. They felt that true scriptural exposition were openings resulting from immediate revelation by God. Quakers rejected infant membership, outward baptism and communion, ordination of ministers, and the use of titles (such as reverend for a person, mister, sir, and courtesies associated with English customs). Of course, traditional Quaker testimonies such as nonconformity, nonviolence, simplicity, strict honesty (including the use of second person singular pronouns then falling out of use in England), and equality of people before God were not standard Puritan fare. Quakers also continued to redefine words when the Puritans had dropped this practice. One of the most fioistrating examples for Puritans was the use of
the word word. In the Bible, two different Greek words are translated word: logos and
rhema. In Greek thought, the logos was the creative movement by the divine to bring
order to the cosmos ("In the beginning was the Word," John 1:1), while the rhema was
the message of God to humans. Puritans insisted that the Bible was the Word of God,
primarily using rhema passages, while Quakers insisted that Jesus was the Word of God,
primarily using logos passages. While these differences might seem trivial to modem
culture, they precipitated pamphlet wars lasting for decades.
^^ Ibid., pp. 513. Isaac Penington wrote that "the scriptures are words, whose chief end and service is to bring men to the Word."
12
Early Friends Meeting Houses in England
Most early Friends meetings were not held in buildings. George Fox and the early
travelling Friends preferred to speak in open fields and marketplaces. However, it was a common understanding that local Friends would host meetings in their houses if the weather outside precluded an open air meeting. From an early date, some meetings decided to build or purchase meeting houses when the local houses were not large enough
to accommodate the attendance.
Historians do not agree upon the earliest Friends meeting house constructed in
England. David M. Butler restates the common understanding that Hertford was the
earliest building constructed specifically to serve as a Friends meeting house (1670), but on the same page states that a dozen Friends meeting houses were constructed before
1670 (not including Nassawaddox [Virginia], which was constructed in 1657). Southall
states more correctly that Hertford "is the oldest surviving Quaker Meeting House to be
built for the purpose in the world." Butler's inventory reveals that the earliest building
constructed to serve as a Friends meeting house was Wigton (constructed around 1653).
Wigton was constructed at a very early stage; among the earliest buildings purchased to
serve as meeting houses were Carlisle (1653) and HuUavington (1654).
-' Butler, pp. 83, 118, 257, 682, and 889; Kenneth H. Southall, Our Quaker Heritage: Early Meeting Houses (York, England: Quaker Home Service, 1984), p. 11; Kenneth L. Carroll, Quakers on the Eastern
Shore (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1970), p. 38.
13
English Quakers constructed a variety of meeting houses forms in the latter half of the seventeenth century. Butler divided the 169 Friends meeting houses constructed
during this half century into eight types. Some of Butler's types are variants of a larger
type, and collecting the variants into larger groups results in three general categories: centralized floorplans, side gallery, and end gallery meeting houses. Butler's research
identifies two periods of extensive construction: 1671 — 1680 and 1686— 1700. During
these years, there was an average of six meeting houses erected each year, compared to
an average of one per year for the remaining years between 1650 and 1700.
The centralized floorplan meeting houses are illustrated by Hertford and Bristol,
each of which is a nearly square meeting house constructed before the development of
facing benches. The original interior arrangement of benches is unknown in any of the
centralized meeting houses. This type was not common and was primarily used in the
earlier meeting houses. Hertford (1670, Figure 4) is a large two-story building with twin
front gables and a door under each of the front gables. The interior was altered in the
early eighteenth century in order to accommodate the large number of recorded ministers
at Hertford, complicating an historical examination of the structure. Hertford presents a
complicated medieval-like shape for an early meeting house. Bristol (Figure 5) was a
square two-story building with a hipped roof and lantern. The significance of the lantern
cannot be overemphasized, as the Bristol Meeting House was lit from above by natural
Butler, passim. The three names were assigned during the process of this thesis, not by Butler.
14 light, an architectural metaphor for the spiritual Light. Also constructed in 1670, Bristol was a pattern for several of the early city meeting houses constructed in North America.
The second major type of early English Friends meeting house is the side gallery, which was common throughout the last quarter of the century. These were one-story, three-bay end-gabled meeting houses with a door centered on one of the sides. Adderbury
Meeting House (Figure 6) illustrates this type. Roof variants included a standard sloped roof (Warwick, 1695), a steep slope (Adderbury, 1675), or a pyramidal roof (Earls Colne,
1674). Visitors entering the door saw rows of benches on either side of the building
facing the ministers' stand straight ahead. The advantage of this particular style of meeting house was that visiting ministers did not have to walk through the mass of
attenders in order to reach the stand.
The third type of meeting house was the end-gallery variety, commonly used after
1671. These meeting houses tended to be front-gabled buildings in which the ministers'
stand was located in one end of the building and the door in the opposite end. This
particular plan seems to reflect a simplified version of the chancel-less AngUcan
architecture. This floorplan required visiting ministers to walk all the way through the
building in order to reach the stand. Butler separates end-gallery meeting houses into
" Butler, pp. 250, 517; Southall, pp. 9-12. A lantern is a cupola-like roof element which admits natural
light into a building.
-'' Butler, pp. 492. Additional examples of this side-gallery type are Strickland (1681), Wymondham (1687), and Barton (1700). Ministers' stands became common during the 1670s in England, as will be
discussed later in this chapter.
15 several categories based upon the location of the door rather than treating the door location as a variant of one type. Colthouse (1688, Figure 7) is an example of a meeting house with a vestibule on one side of the building; Preston Patrick (1691) has a similar
floor plan without the vestibule. The door could instead be centered on the side of the
building as at Faringdon (1672, Figure 8) or be located in the gable end, as at Stourbridge
the (1688, Figure 9). One of the eariiest meeting houses with the end-gallery plan was
Broad Campden Meeting House, purchased and possibly remodeled in 1663. While
Broad Campden had no gallery during its eariy years, the long meeting room and the door
in one of the gable ends predisposed the meeting house to become an end-gallery meeting house.
While Friends meeting house types in seventeenth century England seem to be
diverse in appearance, they were also uniform in their rejection of the Gothic survival.
Friends accepted the Puritan understanding about decoration, so stained glass, icons,
statues, and crosses did not factor into the Quaker understanding of architecture. Friends
in particular disliked towers and steeples; Fox derisively called Anglican worship
buildings steeple houses as long as he lived. When the Quaker architect Thomas Rickman
was hired to help complete the tower and spire at Saffron Walden, a wealthy Friend
26 declined to give any money for the project but offered £300 for its demolition.'
" Ibid., pp. 1 1, 300, 666, and 701; Southall, pp. 4-6. -* Hubert Lidbetter, The Friends Meeting House (York, England: Wm. Sessions, Ltd., 1961), p. 8.
16
Most Friends meeting houses of the seventeenth century do not survive. There are several reasons for this loss of architectural fabric. Since Quakers rejected the idea of sacred architectural space, they had no objection to selling a particular meeting house and erecting another one in a more central locatation. An early example of this was the
Wigton Meeting House, which fell out of use by Friends by 1677. Following the
Restoration, the civil authorities tried to stop Quakers from holding unrecognized conventicles by boarding up the meeting houses (Colchester, 1669), locking the Quakers outside (Lancaster, 1680), or even demolishing them (Christopher Wren demolished the
Horsleydown Meeting House in London in 1670). Other meeting houses were destroyed
during World War II (Gildencroft, Norwich). Finally, some meeting houses needed to be
replaced due to structural failures or the need for larger facilities.
Early Interiors of Friends Meeting Houses
While there are few surviving examples of seventeenth century Friends meeting
houses in England, the existing evidence supports some generalizations about the use of
interior space. There seemed to have been two major considerations for seventeenth
century Friends in the arrangement of interiors: accommodation of ministers and the
needs of business meetings.
^' Butler, pp. 1 18, 180, and 307; Lidbetter, pp. 6 and 9.
17
Early Quakerism spread primarily through visits by itinerant ministers, often called public Friends, and the recognition of spiritual gifts of the members was considered a key element in the early Quaker world view. As a result, meetings were concerned about the needs of public Friends. One of the earliest discussions on the need
to accommodate public Friends was held at Kingston, Surrey, in 1674, resulting in the decision that "a convenient place be made for Friends to stand on." Throughout the decade of the 1670s, more and more meetings began to add ministers' stands in their meeting houses. Early stands consisted of a bench or two facing the general seating, and
later stands placed these benches on a small platform. An additional elaboration by early
Friends was the sounding board. Since the voices of some ministers were lost in the upper voids of the meeting houses. Friends installed a horizontal board above the ministers'
stand to project speakers' voices outward into the gathered body.
The second factor which determined the layout of early Friends meeting house
interiors was the introduction of business meetings. From the earliest years of Quakerism,
Friends wrote letters to George Fox to ask his opinion on various doctrinal or folkway
issues. These letters seemed to bother Fox, who never intended to establish himself as the
head of a cult or sect. His replies often used such language as "Friends, mind that which
^^ Butler, pp. 892-895. Over time, the ministers' gallery came to be the seating for the ministers, elders, overseers, and the clerks. Quakers record ministers (meaning that they record the gift a particular person has received), and they recognize elders, hence the common terms recorded ministers and recognized
elders. Overseers and Clerks are appointed, but they are not called "appointed overseers" or "appointed
clerks." Use of the four offices changed drastically in most Quaker groups in the twentieth century.
18 is pure in you to guide you to God, out of Babylon, out of confusion... mind the Light of
God in your consciences." Fox maintained that anyone could come to know the Lord's will through expectant waiting, so he rejoiced when Friends in Cumberland began to
meet in 1653 to transact business. "It eased me when [business] meetings were set up, for
men and women that are heirs of the gospel have a right to the gospel order, and it
belongs to them," he wrote. By 1671, some women were meeting together to consider
matters regarding members of their sex. Fox encouraged these meetings, since he felt that
Quakers needed to call upon the dormant gifts in the Church. Separate business meetings
for women began to spread during the 1 670s, especially after a group of Quakers led by
John Wilkinson and John Story left Friends partially as a protest against holding separate
business meetings for women. Throughout the seventeenth century, men and women in
England sat together for worship; when the time arrived to hold the business meeting, the
women would leave the room and relocate to another room or a nearby house. Friends at
Broad Campden arrived at an early solution for holding separate meetings: they built a
second story onto their meeting house in 1677 for use by the women. Separate business
meetings were slow to materialize in England (especially when compared to American
Quakers), and London Yearly Meeting issued advices on the establishment of separate
business meetings intermittently until 1745.
-' The Works of George Fox (State College PA: New Foundation Fellowship, 1990), vol. 7, p. 18;
Beginnings of Quakerism, p. 143; Second Period of Quakerism, pp. 273-274, 297, 303; Butler, pp. 207, 898-899.
19
Of course, the two factors mentioned above were related. Once the women were
expected to leave the room for business meetings, any women who were considered public Friends, and who therefore sat in the ministers' stand, needed to have special seats so they could depart without disturbing men who were seated on the same benches. One
initial solution was to have the women sit on the lowest benches of the stand. At Peel
Meeting House in London, the meeting complained about the "inconvenience from the public womens' seats being placed under the men's gallery, their backs being towards the
men, so that a man and a woman sometimes stand up together to speak." hi 1678, one
meeting attempted to require the men and women sit separately for worship, thus solving
the problem of facilitating the transition from worship to business. This solution was not
adopted in England, but it became normative in North America. Eventually the English
Friends compromised by assigning seats to the public women to facilitate their departure
for business sessions elsewhere.
The development of Quaker folkways in England was in its infancy when the first
Quakers arrived in America. Although an ocean separated British Friends from their
American counterparts, developments spread across the ocean and across the North
American continent fairly quickly due to the continuous stream of travelling ministers.
Thus, while some of the developments (such as the creation of separate women's
business meetings and the construction of ministers' stands) emerged after the Friends
^° Butler, pp. 892-899. 20 meetings in North America had been settled, they were transmitted easily across the
Atlantic. Quakers in America brought their understandings of Quakerism with them to
North America, and the seeds of many Quaker folkways are based upon eariy English
Quakerism.^'
^' Throughout the first two centuries of Quakerism, ministers often embarked upon travels of various
lengths. These travels served to solidify the bonds among the various Quaker communities and also served
to spread new ideas.
21
Chapter II.
American Friends Find a Form
There was a variety of meeting house shapes during the first century of
Quakerism in North America. The earhest meeting houses seem to follow local building traditions, although few illustrations of these buildings exist. The three English Friends meeting house forms appeared in the colonies after 1690, and the existing evidence shows these styles dominating Quaker construction for several decades. American
Quakers embraced the idea of separate business meetings for men and women earlier than their English counterparts, and this decision caused an architectural drift towards a standard Quaker form. Once a solution to the basic issues involved in Friends meeting
house construction was offered, it became the preferred style of Quaker meeting house architecture in North America and dominated Quaker religious architecture for a century.
There is little description of the earliest Friends meeting houses erected in North
America. One of the earliest was the log meeting house at Nassawaddox, Virginia, built by Levin Denwood in 1657. The earliest meeting house in Maryland was Betty's Cove
Meeting House (1669); it was enlarged before George Fox visited it in 1672, and even
^^ then he wrote that it was not large enough to contain all the people who gathered there.
The oldest Friends meeting house extant in America is Third Haven, Maryland
(Figure 10), erected c. 1682 as the Maryland Yearly Meeting House. Its appearance today
gives little indication of its original appearance because it was repaired and enlarged
Carroll, pp. 28-29, and 38.
22
many times, begimiing in the year 1700 and continuing intermittently until 1797. Its last
renovations gave it a facade reflecting developments of the 1760s.^^
Two Friends meeting houses erected in the 1 680s give some indications of the
earliest Quaker architecture in North America. These two meeting houses - Burlington
(New Jersey) and Salem (Massachusetts) - show Quakers using vernacular building types
for the construction of their meeting houses.^''
One of the earliest Friends meeting houses with a surviving illustration is the
famous hexagonal Burlington (New Jersey) Meeting House of 1683 (Figure 11).
Burlington Monthly Meeting decided in 1682: "It is ordered yt a meeting house be built
according to a draft of six square building of Forty feet square from out to out." The
Burlington Meeting House was situated within an enclosed yard and consisted of a large
hexagonal room with a six-sided roof leading to a large lantern. Each of the walls was 23
feet 4 inches in length. Inside, the benches apparently were arranged in four parts
separated by two aisles. Burlington Friends succeeded in erecting a nonconformist
meeting house, but they were dissatisfied with the results. The meeting house was too
small and had no chimney for heat. In 1 696, the building was enlarged by the addition of
a rear wing with an end chimney; a set of facing benches was added along the long side
of the addition.^^
Carroll, pp. 110-112. Maryland Yearly Meeting was renamed Baltimore Yearly Meeting in 1774. Research for this paper located no illustrations of earlier unaltered American meeting houses than Burlington, New Jersey, and Salem, Massachusetts. ^^ The minutes were quoted in George M. Hills, History of the Church in Burlington, New Jersey (Trenton
NJ: W.S. Sharp Printing Co., 1885), p. 10; Tvaryanas, pp. 45-48.
23
The Salem (Massachusetts) Meeting House (Figure 12) was erected in 1688 by
Thomas Maule. Salem was an 18x21 foot building, one-story and two-bay, with an end
gabled roof. The illustration shows a shed addition on one side and a saltbox extension on
the rear. The shed addition may have been later, since it is clad with clapboard while the
remainder of the meeting house is clad with shingles. The entry door is located in the left
bay (possibly the western bay) with a large casement window in the alternate bay. There
was also a large casement window in the gable.
Introduction of English Prototypes
The first clear evidence of the arrival of English prototypes in the colonies is
found during the 1690s. Each of the three English forms appears in the illustrative record.
There are many examples of American Quaker use of both the Bristol Plan and the side-
gallery plan. However, a schismatic Quaker group used the end-gallery plan early in the
1690s; there does not seem to be any evidence of the main body of American Quakers
using the end-gallery plan, possibly due to its new association with the Keithians.
The Bristol Plan in America
Most examples of the Bristol Plan were erected in cities. These Friends meeting
houses are large square buildings with a lantern, modeled after the Bristol Meeting House
in England. Among the known examples are the Great Meeting House in Philadelphia
'* "The First Quaker Meeting House in Salem," in The Essex Antiquarian Tenth Month 1909, vol. 13, no. 4,
^. pp. 145-146.
24
(Pennsylvania); the Great Meeting House in Newport (Rhode Island); Wilmington
(Delaware); and Charleston (South Carolina).
One of the earliest examples of the Bristol (England) type of meeting house was the Great Meeting House in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania). This square building (50 feet by
50 feet) was erected in 1695 on the southwestern comer of High and Second Streets on land William Perm had set aside for George Fox in 1682. The fifty foot square meeting house was a monument to early Philadelphia Quakerism and was described by Watson as follows:
The first meeting-house was surmounted in the centre of its four-angled
roof, by a raised fi-ame of glass work, so constructed as to pass light down into the
Meeting below, after the manner of the former Burlington meeting-house.^'
The Great Meeting House erected in 1699 in Newport, Rhode Island (Figure 13) for the use of the yearly meeting (then called Rhode Island Yearly Meeting) was a second instance of the Bristol Plan. This large two-story, five-bay meeting house was fifty feet square with a hipped roof leading to a lantern. Throughout most of its history, the
Newport Meeting House was too small for yearly meeting sessions, and it was enlarged several times. A 1705 addition proved too small and was removed for a 1729 addition.
" J. Thomas Scharf and Thompson Westcott, eds.. History of Philadelphia 1609—1884 (Philadelphia: L.H.
Everts & Co., 1884), vol. 2, p. 1244; Joseph B. Jackson, Encyclopedia of Philadelphia (Harrisburg PA:
National Historical Association, 1933), vol. 4, p. 1028; John F. Watson, Annals of Philadelphia and
Pennsylvania, in the Olden Time (Philadelphia: E.S. Stuart Co., 1877), vol. 1, pp. 355-356 and vol. 3, p. 432.
25
This two-story, three-bay addition had an end-gabled roof and an end chimney. The interior wall of the addition could be raised in order to create a 50 by 80 room.^^
Illustrations exist of two later Bristol Plan meeting houses, which individually are not as significant. They were erected in Wilmington, Delaware (Figure 14), and
Charleston, South Carolina (Figure 15). Each of these buildings shared the common pattern of being situated in the center of a walled city block.
Lanterns and Quakers had a bittersweet history. A significant advantage was that natural light flooding the room from above served an architectural metaphor for the spiritual Light. In addition, many meeting houses provided a means of opening the lanterns for ventilation. However, lanterns had serious problems. William Alexander wrote that when the lanterns were open, people's voices also escaped: people standing outside could hear what was being said but people inside could not. This was especially the case if the speaker was standing directly under the lantern. Hence Quakers soon dropped the Bristol Plan.""
A variant of the Bristol Plan was the square meeting house without a lantern. One of the earliest examples of this type was the Bank Meeting House in Philadelphia (Figure
16). The Bank Meeting House was a large two-story, three-bay building fifty feet square with a special roof created by a gambrel on each of its four sides. A pedimented portico
^* "Friends Meetinghouse: Newport, Rhode Island, 1699," in Peter T. Mallary, New England Churches & Meetinghouses. 1680—1830 (NYC: Vendome Press, 1985), pp. 46-50. ^' An illustration of the Wilmington Meeting House was printed in Edward P. Bartlett, etal.. Friends in
Wilmington J 738—1938 (Wilmington DE: Charles L. Story Company, 1938), p. 30. A cut of the
Charleston Meeting House was printed in The American Friend, Third Month 1, 1900, p. 202. '"' William Alexander, Observations on the Construction and Fitting Up ofMeeting Houses &c for Public
Worship (York, England: William Alexander, 1 820), p. 9.
26 announced the doorway in the central bay. Men entered the meeting house by the eastern door under the portico, which led to the eastern room inside. There were double doors on the south side; one of these doors led the women to the western room, and the other served public Friends who sat on the facing benches along the north wall. The meeting house was divided for business by a curtain. The first meeting house on this location, called the Evening Meeting House, was demolished in 1698; Philadelphia Friends
replaced it in 1703 using surplus materials from the recently demolished Center Square
Meeting House. It is this second building which has a surviving illustration.
The Bank Meeting House is significant for many reasons. Its exterior shows
American Friends experimenting with English forms at an early stage. One of these experiments was the idea that men and women should have separate entrances. In addition, the Bank Meeting House is the first American Friends meeting house to incorporate interior features which later became standard: facing benches along the north wall, an eastern room for the men and a western room for the women. Additionally, the
Bank Meeting House sat in the middle of a city lot framed by a large brick wall, a pattern later copied by many urban Friends meeting houses.'*
Another architectural variant of the Bristol Plan was the square meeting house with a pyramidal roof and no lantern. An important architectural feature of the pyramidal
^' The two Bank Street Meeting Houses have been confused by many historians. The name Bank Meeting
House only developed after the American Revolution when the hill in front of the meeting house was excavated in order to level Front Street. Watson's Annals, 1877 version, vol. 1, pp. 390-391 and vol. 3, p. 431; Edwin B. Bronner, "Quaker Landmarks in Early Philadelphia," in Historic Philadelphia: From the
Founding until the Early Nineteenth Century (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1953), p. 210. "^ Watson's Aimals, 1877 version, vol. 1, p. 390. The Bank Meeting House was sold in 1789 because
Friends tired of young non-Quaker teenage boys harassing young Quaker women on their way to the evening meetings, according to Watson, vol. 1 p. 507.
27 meeting houses was their comer chimneys. Two examples of this type were the Pine
Street Meeting House in Philadelphia (Figure 17) and Sadsbury Meeting House in
Lancaster County, Pennsylvania (Figure 1 8). Both of these meeting houses were two- story, three-bay brick meeting houses with side entries similar to those on the Bank
Meeting House. One of the interior features of the Bank Meeting House survives in the
Sadsbury Meeting House: there are raised areas on both the north and south sides for ministers' galleries.
Square meeting houses were common throughout the eighteenth century. Other examples of square meeting houses were Old Springfield, New Jersey (1699), and
Centre, North Carolina (c. 1760), both twenty feet square. One of the last square meeting houses of this era was Downingtown (Pennsylvania) Meeting House in (1807).
End-Gallery Meeting Houses in America
As in England, the end-gallery plan consisted of a long rectangular building with
a ministers' stand at one end of the building and the entry doors on the other end. There
seems to be only one example of this particular type in the colonies, although it was
common in England. This American example was constructed by the schismatic
followers of George Keith at the southwestern comer of Second and Arch Streets in
Philadelphia and was used from 1692 until 1707. The prominent gambrel roof of the
" Robert F. Looney, Old Philadelphia: In Early Photographs 1839—1914 (NYC: Dover Publications, 1976; T. Chalkley Matlack, Brief Historical Sketches Concerning Friends' Meetings (Moorestown NJ:
1938), vol. l,p. 265.
^ Tvaryanas, pp. 185-187; History of Centre Friends Meeting, 1757—1954 (Greensboro NC: Centre
Monthly Meeting, 1954), p. 6; Francis G. Brown, Downingtown Friends Meeting: An Early History of
Quakers in the Great Valley (Glenmoore PA: Glenmoore Corporation, 1999), p. 4.
28
Keithian Meeting House featured a pent-like overhang on both sides of the building. An
entry vestibule on the front gable end of the building had a hipped roof There was an
additional entry door on the side. While the surviving illustration (Figure 19) has some
provenance problems, it does replicate one of the three English meeting house prototypes.
It is likely that the reason American Friends did not use this particular plan was that it was associated with the Keith schism at an early date.
Side-Gallery Meeting Houses in America
American examples of the side-gallery plan mirrored the English examples. These
were rectangular-shaped meeting houses in which the entry doors were generally
centered on one side of the building; upon entering, one would see rows of benches for
the general seating facing the ministers' stand directly ahead. By the middle of the
eighteenth century, the ministers' stand extended from wall to wall rather than being a
few benches centered along the north wall of the meeting house. Side-gallery meeting
houses are often divided into types based upon roof choice: gambrel, hipped, and gabled.
Gambrel-roofed meeting houses existed from an early date. The earliest known
example was the Keithian meeting house, discussed earlier. Another early example was
the 1 709 Little Egg Harbor Meeting House in Tuckerton, New Jersey (Figure 20), a one-
story, five-bay meeting house with a central chimney and a pedimented portico over the
central doorway. The interior was probably not divided until the preparative meeting was
established here in 1714. Another early example is Old Kennett Meeting House in
*' Watson's Annals, 1877 version, vol. 3, p. 431; Bonner, p. 21 1; John T. Paris, Old Churches and Meeting
Houses In and Around Philadelphia (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1926), p. 84-85.
29
Chester County (Pennsylvania), erected c. 1710; its roof was changed to a gable roof in the nineteenth century. Perhaps the last gambrel-roofed meeting house was the Camden
(Delaware), buiU in 1806. Camden is one of the very few meeting houses with dormers."*^
Research for this thesis only produced one illustration of a hipped roof variety of the side-gallery plan. The Flushing (New York) Meeting House (Figure 21) was originally erected in 1694 and enlarged in 1717. This building is now a large two-story meeting house clad with wood shingles. The chimney pierces the roof about a third of the way down from the ridgepole, possibly indicating the end of the core.
Over time, the gabled roof variety became the most popular variety of the side-
gallery plan. It is always assumed that the early log meeting houses in various localities
fell into this category, since the existing log meeting houses are gabled. Other early end-
gabled rectangular meeting houses were constructed of brick (Cecil, Maryland, 1 694
[Figure 22]) or frame (Fair Hill, Philadelphia, 1702). These early gabled meeting houses
are more vernacular in appearance and are almost all three-bay buildings with a centered
door.^^
[One of the important early gabled rectangular meeting houses was the Evening
Meeting House in Philadelphia (1685), built on the site of the later Bank Meeting House.
History has not preserved a likeness of this frame building, but it is known to have had a
38 by 50 footprint. Thomas Holme, William Perm's surveyor of Philadelphia, served on
the committee of four Friends to select its location. The Bank Meeting House was used
"* Tvaryanas, pp. 169-172; Bi-Centennial of Old Kennett Meeting House. 1710—1910 (Philadelphia:
Walter H. Jenkins, 1910), p. 37; Lippincott, p. 55.
'*' "Flushing Meetinghouse Pictured Above," in The American Friend, Ninth Month 29, 1949, p. 318. " Tvaryanas, p. 31; Carroll, p. 53; Watson's Annals, 1877 version, vol. 3 page 432.
30 by Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and the Provincial Assembly. It apparently had several structural problems, since Friends worked on repairs throughout its existence before
demolishing it altogether in 1698 after only thirteen years of service.''^]
During the 1690s, the two factors affecting English Quaker interiors began to spread in America: bicameral business meetings and the ministers' gallery. Neither of these two factors appeared in the earliest meeting houses in North America because they had not emerged as Quaker folkways by that time. By the end of the century, both elements were generally adopted. A minute of Middletown Monthly Meeting in
Peimsylvania in 1 699 stated that Friends agreed that
. . . public Friends do sit in the galleries, and the elder Friends with them, or
before the galleries; and that our women Friends take one side of the house,
and the men the other; and that all sit with their faces toward the galleries.
The addition of the ministers' gallery was not universally applauded. The Evening
Meeting House in Philadelphia was erected without a gallery, but one was added within seven years. When George Keith and his supporters began to separate from Quakers in the early 1690s, they built a second ministers' gallery along the south wall of the Evening
Meeting House. When leading Quakers spoke from the front, Keith would stand on his gallery in the back and offer his rebuttal. After a few weeks of enduring this situation,
"' Scharf and Westcott, vol. 2, p. 1242; Watson's Annals, 1877 version, vol. 1, pp. 390-391, 507; Bronner, pp. 210-211. ^° Quoted in Seth B. Hinshaw, The Carolina Quaker Experience (Greensboro NC: North Carolina Friends
Historical Society, 1984), p. 296.
31
Robert Turner entered the meeting house with axes and tore out both galleries (1691).
Turner, a Keithian Quaker, had always opposed the existence of ministers' galleries.'''
The American solution for dividing the women from the men for business meetings was the use of a frame partition. Partitions began to appear in North America at an early stage. Burlington Monthly Meeting, Burlington Quarterly Meeting, and
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting were held in the bicameral style after 1681, and other meetings followed suit. As a result, the men and women needed to meet in separate buildings if the meeting house did not have a partition. One of the earhest indications of a frame partition in a meeting room was that erected at Salem (New Jersey) in 1685. The
Bank Meeting House had a curtain to separate the men from the women. Not all Friends meeting houses needed partitions, since Friends did not hold business meetings in every meeting house. Many meeting houses were enlarged when a business meeting began to meet there, and the partition was added at that time.^^
An alternate means of providing room for separate business meetings was to add a separate room for the women to use. This movement to enlarge the meeting house by adding a second room led to some unusual architecture, as illustrated by two of the Welsh meeting houses west of Philadelphia.
The first Welsh meeting to consider is Merion, Pennsylvania (Figure 23). This is one of the most unusual meeting houses in the Delaware Valley and has been a point of contention throughout the past century. The matter at hand is the shape of the meeting
Scharf and Westcott, vol. 2, p. 1242; Watson's Annals, 1877 version, vol. 1, pp. 390-391, 507; Bronner, p. 210-211; Susan L. Garfinkel, "Genres of Worldliness: Meanings of die Meeting House for Philadelphia
Friends," dissertation in the American Civilization department. University of Pennsylvania, 1997, p. 1. ^^ Tvaryanas, p. 52; Watson's Annals, 1877 version, vol. 1, p. 390.
32
house. While it has been traditionally called cruciform, it does not have a Latin cross
shape (t) or a Greek cross shape (+) but rather a T-shape. The first historian to investigate
the history of the shape of Merion was George Smith in the latter years of the nineteenth
century. His research led him to believe that the original Merion meeting house was
constructed of wood in 1695 and replaced with the present building in 1713. During the
bicentennial celebration of the meeting house in 1895, someone discovered references to
a marriage at the meeting house at Merion in 1693, which many historians have
interpreted as an earlier building. Paris wrote, "The unusual form of the building, which
is cruciform, indicating not that this form was chosen at the beginning, but was the result
of additions." Hicksite Friends retained the building after 1 827 and have maintained that
the cruciform shape of the building was an historical accident; early Friends felt that the
^^ exhibition of crosses detracted people from the inward cross.
The National Park Service decided to try their hand at unravelling the mystery for the Historic American Buildings Survey. After reviewing the evidence, the NPS
concluded that the Welsh Friends intended to erect Merion in its final form, writing
Without a standard to emulate, it is conceivable that the recently immigrated
Friends constructed a meeting house that was an adaptation of what was familiar
to them. That would have been the rural parish churches of their homeland. Thus,
Merion Meeting House's unusual configuration may merely reflect the lack of
Theodore W. Bean, ed., History of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: Everts & Peck,
1884), p. 928; Bi-Centennial Anniversary of the Friends ' Meeting House at Merion, Pennsylvania 1695—
1895 (Philadelphia: Friends' Book Association, 1895), p. 12; Fans, p. 165.
33
prescribed standards for meeting house design during the early period of
^'* settlement.
Evidence that Welsh Friends may have intended to follow architectural traditions of their homeland includes the fact that the framing of the meeting house follows the cruck or bent principal rafter system. This medieval building tradition was already out of fashion
in England; Merion seems to be one of a very few examples of it in America.
NPS research produced the following chronology. The references to a meeting house in 1693 may be a prior log structure, no longer extant, hi 1695 the southern room of Merion was erected as part of a long-range building program. Following English precedent, the second floor of the south room became the room for the women's business meetings in 1702. hi 1703, Merion Friends were collecting funds to pay for "the addition to ye meeting house," meaning they were ready to begin construction of the northern
room. Once the northern room was complete, it served as the worship room; at the time
for business meetings, the women would depart into the southern room and the messenger would close the partition.
Radnor (Pennsylvania) is a second Welsh meeting house illustrating the development of Friends meeting house architecture. Radnor (Figure 24) was originally a
one-story, three-bay meeting house with a steeply pitched roof and a 1718 datestone. It
differs from Merion in that the framing follows the king-post truss system and that the
windows are sash rather than casement, hi 1 722, Radnor Friends added a smaller room
^* "Merion Friends Meeting House" report for the Historic American Buildings Survey, HABS No. PA-
HS, 1997, p. 6, 12. 55 ' Ibid. 56 Ibid.,pp.5, 15-17.
34 onto their meeting house to accommodate the women's business meeting. This one-story, two-bay addition was not as tall as the core of the building, possibly to preserve a view of the original datestone. As at Merion, the women's room was smaller because the women met with the men for worship and did not need as large a room as the original room, where the men met.^^
Simple Doubled Meeting Houses
The Simple Doubled Plan consisted of a meeting house with two interior rooms separated by a partition and a three-bay facade. Among the early examples of the Simple
Doubled Plan is Old Kennett in Chester Co., Pennsylvania, which was last enlarged/rebuilt in 1731. At the time. Old Kennett had a gambrel roof, which was replaced by a gable roof during the nineteenth century. Other examples include the
Trenton (New Jersey) Meeting House (1739) and the Haddonfield (New Jersey) Meeting
House (1760, Figure 25).^^
The most important example of the Simple Doubled Plan was the Greater Meeting
House at Second and Market Streets in Philadelphia (Figure 26). hi 1755, the Great
Meeting House in Philadelphia was demolished and replaced by a new meeting house along the Simple Doubled model. This two-story meeting house was much larger than the
Great Meeting House (hence the name Greater Meeting House), being 55x73 rather than
" Ibid., pp. 18; Bonner, p. 19. '* Bonner, p. 66; Tvaryanas, pp. 26, 195-196. Damon Tvaryanas called these meeting houses the "Bank Plan" because their fa9ade imitates the Bank Meeting House. However, the Bank Meeting House was square and was "doubled" by dividing the square with a cloth partition rather than consisting of two square rooms side by side. I chose to call these buildings "Simple Doubled" to distinguish them from the later Quaker Ideal Plan.
35
50x50. Ironically, the building was too small to hold the full attendance of Philadelphia
Yearly Meeting. The women Friends met at the Greater Meeting House, and the men met
at the Pine Street Meeting House.^^
The first use of the Greater Meeting House for yearly meeting sessions was
important in Quaker history. Some Friends expressed concerns that Friends were losing
their distinctiveness and not valuing the Quaker testimonies. The yearly meeting agreed
and appointed a committee to visit the local meetings. This committee led to a series of
purges of the membership as those Friends who chose not to observe Quaker distinctives
were stripped of their membership. These were the first steps in a new era in Quaker
history emphasizing uniformity, Quaker distinctiveness, and greater separation fi-om
world. It was during this time that Friends withdrew fi-om government in Permsylvania
(having been forced out elsewhere already) and developed new testimonies such as
opposition to slavery. This increasing emphasis upon uniformity among Friends impacted
the way Quakers viewed their architecture, since the evolution in form was taking place
during this time; once the form was realized, Quaker uniformity helped that form to
^^ supplant all others.
Bronner, p. 21 1; Garfinkel, p. 116. *" Garfinkel, p. 116. The new era inaugurated at the Greater Meeting House in 1755 is the subject of Jack D. Marietta, The Reformation of American Quakerism, 1748— 1783 (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1 984). This book examines the increased use of meeting discipline in Philadelphia
Yearly Meeting. Marietta downplays nonconformity among Quakers during earlier decades rather than
.,i»>' seeing it as a precursor to the concerns raised in 1755.
36
roof collapsed in 1856. It was "restored" in 1904 with fishscale shingles in the gables as
was common in the Queen Anne houses of that era.^^
The Quaker Ideal Plan
By the middle of the eighteenth century, American Quakers were on the verge of
a new architectural style. This new style presented the solution to the architectural issues
of the day and was such an obvious statement of Quaker ideals that it became the unique
Quaker style of architecture.
One of the earliest examples of the Quaker Ideal Plan is Cain Meeting House in
Chester County, Pennsylvania (Figure 30). This one-story, six-bay meeting house was
erected with identical rooms for the men and women. In addition, the ministers' gallery
ran all the way across the north side of the meeting house rather than being centered
along the wall in each room. Cain, thus, represents one of the earliest built examples of
the Quaker Ideal style which came to dominate Friends meeting house construction
during the century from 1770 to 1870. It is unfortunate that the exact date of the Cain
Meeting House is so difficult to determine. An earlier meeting house was erected in 1726,
and this date is commonly given for the existing building. Matlack gave a later date of
1743 for the existing building, and other historians have accepted his account.
Architecturally speaking, a date of 1726 for the existing Cain Meeting House would have
S. Allen Chambers Jr., Lynchburg: An Architectural History (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1981), pp. 25-27.
38 precluded the development of the Simple Doubled and the Proto-Ideal Plans altogether
and seems highly unlikely.^
The next known example of the Quaker Ideal Plan is also found on the western
Pennsylvania frontier, at Exeter in 1758 (Figure 31). As at Cain, Exeter is a one-story,
six-bay meeting house with doors in the second and fifth bays and two equal interior
rooms separated by a frame partition.^''
Since the new form had been developed so far from the mainstream of
Philadelphia Quakerism, it took a few years to come to the notice of Friends in general,
hi 1763, a new large two-story meeting house was erected at Fourth and Chestnut Streets
in Philadelphia, on the comer near today's Carpenters' Hall (Figure 32). The only
surviving illusfration of this meeting house shows the rear of the building. However, it is
clear that the rear was six bays wide. It is possible that the Chestnut Street Meeting
House was the earliest example of the Quaker Ideal Plan to be erected in Philadelphia
proper, and that it was located such that visitors to Philadelphia Yearly Meeting could
sfroU over to investigate the new style.^^
Throughout the next decades, the Quaker Ideal Plan became more common. In
1764 the Makefield (Permsylvania) Meeting House was doubled to resemble the Quaker
Ideal, and in 1768, Buckingham (Pennsylvania) Meeting House was erected as the first
two-story Quaker Ideal meeting house. Friends from New Jersey used Buckingham as a
The date 1726 is given on the sign outside of Cain today and is given in Brown, p. 9. TTie 1743 date is
preferred by Bonner, p. 67. When Cain Quarterly Meeting was formed in 1801, the Cain Meeting House was enlarged; an additional room was added onto the eastern end of the building which was the same size as the two original rooms together.
^ Bonner, p. 84.
"Bronner, p. 213.
39 model when they erected new meeting houses at Salem and Chesterfield. While the square and simple doubled plans continued in use throughout the remainder of the century, the overwhelming majority of new Friends meeting houses in North America followed the new Quaker Ideal Plan.^^
' Tvaryanas, pp. 73-74, 259-261, 284-291; Bonner, p. 76.
40
Chapter III.
The Quaker Ideal Meeting House
For a century. Friends meeting houses followed the Quaker Ideal Plan. There
were variations in some minor details, but this standard spread across North American
Quakerism in the latter half of the eighteenth century and dominated new construction
until the 1 870s. This chapter deals with the particulars of the Quaker Ideal Plan and
considers variations of site, exterior, interior, and use.
Meeting House Sites
A discussion of meeting houses would not be complete without a consideration of
the site integrity. Most meetings own a building and a burial ground, and many have
schools, parking, and open space as well. During the dominance of the Quaker Ideal,
"parking" meant the erection of horse sheds. The need for these various elements was a
factor in locating meeting houses.
Due to the use of silence as a basis of worship, Quakers usually attempted to
locate their meeting houses where they would not suffer many disturbances. Locating
rural meeting houses was often simple. Many of them were located amongst farms, with
parking in front and the burial ground in the back. While rural locations presented few
audial challenges to Friends, urban meetings were a problem from the beginning. Almost
all of the early Friends meeting houses were located in the center of a large lot enclosed
, with a brick wall. The Bank Meeting House was one of the earliest meeting houses with a
41
brick wall (Figure 16), and all Philadelphia meeting houses were so constructed until
Race Street in 1856. The brick wall not only helped to quiten the outside noise during
worship, but also served to enclose playing space for the children who attended the
meeting school, often located inside the wall (Figure 32).^^
Secondary features associated with Friends meeting houses included schools,
horse sheds, and burial grounds. The architecture of Friends schools would be a thesis in
itself, since their design has changed from the octagonal buildings through larger
classroom buildings to modem open plan buildings. In contrast, the design of horse sheds
tended to be more uniform (Figure 33).''^ Horse sheds generally consisted of an end-
gabled building which was open on the front to reveal interior stalls. The roof profile is
interesting, since having a gabled roof meant that rainwater dropped off the eaves on the
entrance side. One of the rare examples of a horse shed with a shed roof (thus draining all
the rainwater off the back of the building) was constructed at Longwood, Chester Co.
(Pennsylvania). Horse sheds tended to be located to the northwest of the meeting house
(Figure 34). Burial grounds were also somewhat uniform. Early Quakers generally
opposed the use of tombstones, although some Friends always favored their use. By the
early nineteenth century, small tombstones began to appear in Friends burial grounds.
Local meetings decided how strictly to enforce the Quaker tradition not to have stones,
meaning that one meeting might have large stones while a nearby meeting has none.
However, by the end of the nineteenth century all surviving meetings allowed the use of a
*' Examples of meeting house walls include Bank Street, Watson's Annals (1871), vol. 1, p. 361; Arch
Street; and Pine Street, Looney, p. 43. ** ^,^. Friends have called these structures horse sheds rather than horse stables throughout history.
42
stone of some kind. Burial grounds tended to be located on the northeastern side of the
meeting house (Figure 34).''^
Exteriors of the Quaker Ideal Meeting Houses
The Quaker Ideal meeting house consisted of a one- or two-story, six-bay
building with doors in the second and fifth bays. While they were generally identical,
some differences existed. Exterior differences resulted from regional variations or local
needs. These differences fall into these general categories: orientation, building materials,
fenestration, and porches.
The overwhelming majority of Quaker Ideal Plan meeting houses were oriented
east to west, with a room for the women on the west side and the room for men on the
east side. Two possible explanations for this orientation are (1) south-facing meeting
houses took advantage of the sun for heating during the winter; and (2) those attending a
Friends meeting for worship faced north and south rather than east, thus varying fi-om the
Anglican practice. Few meeting houses departed from this orientation; among east-facing
meeting houses (meaning that the Friends seated in the ministers' gallery faced east) are
New Garden (Pennsylvania) and Jericho (New York). The Downingtown (Pennsylvania)
Meeting House (1807) faces north rather than south. Throughout the nineteenth century,
Friends placed less emphasis upon orientation, possibly due to the introduction of stoves
*' Matlack Sketches. Quakers have traditionally chosen not to use the word cemetery, a word first common
in the nineteenth century. Other euphemisms such as grave yard and burying ground found greater
.^iity acceptance among Quakers but were not as common as the term burial ground.
43
for heat; in any case, as the nineteenth century progressed, there was a greater variation in
the orientation of Friends meeting houses (especially in urban areas).
Quakers used a diversity of building materials in their meeting houses. In most
communities after 1725, the earliest meeting houses were log. Several log meeting houses
survive to the present, including Roaring Creek and Catawissa, both in Pennsylvania.
Frame meeting houses have also existed from an early date; Third Haven, Maryland
(Figure 10) was originally erected in 1682 (although it has been extensively renovated in
the intervening centuries). Frame meeting houses are most common in rural areas; in
Philadelphia, the only frame meeting house in recent times was the Orthodox Frankford
Meeting House. Many frame meeting houses in New England and New York were clad
with wood shingles. Stone meeting houses are common in the Delaware Valley, but rare
elsewhere except western New York, where cobblestone meeting houses are found (e.g.,
Hartland and Wheatland). From the early eighteenth century, however, the favorite
building material was brick. Whenever Friends were strong enough to warrant the
expense, they often used brick. Brick ornamentation was rare, but two patterns existed.
Lozenge patterns in the brick (using glazed headers) was uncommon but is found at
Rancocas (New Jersey) and Frankford (Pennsylvania). A second type of brick
ornamentation was the use of brick arches over windows, found in many early meeting
houses but somewhat rare after the American Revolution.^"
Bonner, p. 14; T. Chalkley Matlack, "An Album of Friends' Meeting Houses and Schools West of the
Delaware River," Swarthmore College, vol. 1, p. 28; Crosscurrents, p. 47; Lidbetter, p. 51; Lippincott, p. ^" 104.
44
'
The Quaker Ideal Plan had a consistent fenestration: six bays with doors
appearing in the second and fifth bays. Two-story meeting houses almost always had six
windows on the second floor fa9ade. There were variants on this scheme. In Indiana,
there was a tradition of having ten-bay meeting houses with doors in the third and
seventh bays. Spiceland (1833, Figure 35) and Back Creek (1841) are examples of these
ten-bay meeting houses. An additional source for variety in fenestration is derived from
the special meeting house constructed for quarterly meetings (Figure 30). Often when a
quarterly meeting found that none of the meeting houses was large enough and centrally
located, it would add a very large room onto an existing Quaker Ideal meeting house. The
exterior then consisted of a twelve-bay building, with doors appearing in the second,
fifth, eighth, and eleventh bays. The interior consisted of three rooms. The easternmost
room was used specifically by the men during their quarterly meeting and the women
used the older two rooms. The men and women retained their old rooms for the monthly
and preparative meetings. As a result, quarterly meeting houses had two interior
partitions.'
The third source of exterior variation was the construction of porches. Protection
from the elements was considered important because Quakers developed a notion that
one should not enter the meeting room while someone was speaking in the ministry or
praying. Therefore, a late comer would need to stand outside until the ministering Friend
finished. There were several variations of protection from rain on meeting houses: the
portico, the hood, the vestibule, and the porch.
" Gregory Hinshaw, pp. 42, 89; William H. Stanton, Our Ancestors. The Stantons (Philadelphia: William
,^v. H. Stanton, 1922), p. 436.
45
One of the earliest forms was the portico. Porticoes consisted of a small roof over
the door supported by columns. These columns were mostly square in the early
installations. Examples of porticoes existed from early times; the Bank Meeting House
(Figure 16) had one. However, most porticoes were added during the nineteenth century,
replacing window hoods. These later porticoes often used round columns (Figure 36).^^
The hood was a pediment overhang which was cantilevered out from the wall
over a door. Entry hoods have been associated with Friends meeting houses in the
Delaware Valley for many decades, and some twentieth century meeting houses
incorporate them as historicizing elements. A significant disadvantage of hoods was that
they cracked the interior plaster over the door, leaving a characteristic semi-circle; as a
result, many meetings replaced their hoods during the nineteenth century. [See Figure 30
for an example of the common type of hoods found in the Delaware Valley.]
A third type of shelter was the vestibule. This feature was common in New
England, where winter weather made Friends cautious about standing outside while
waiting for ministering Friends to conclude their remarks. New England vestibules
mostly contain two doors, although the doors are sometimes paired (Figures 37 and 38).
Since the vestibules had the secondary benefit of separating outside noise from the
meeting room. Friends occasionally moved the stairs to the youth's gallery into the
vestibule to reduce the noise generated from their use. Some Philadelphia meeting houses
had two smaller vestibules (one for men and one for women) rather than one large
'^ Watson's Annals, vol. 1, p. 361; Francis J. Puig, "The Porches of Quaker Meeting Houses in Chester and
Delaware Counties," in Pennsylvania Folklife (Winter 1974), vol. 24, no. 2, pp. 21-30.
,^«"Puig, pp. 21-30.
46 vestibule. Among Philadelphia meeting houses with vestibules were Twelfth Street
(Figure 39), Spruce Street and Orange Street/''
During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Friends discovered the advantages of full-length front porches. Porches had been common for the women for
many years, usually located on the western side of the meeting house (Figure 1 ). The disadvantage of hoods led to their replacement with porches. One of the earliest instances of the use of a full-length porch was at Valley, Pennsylvania, in 1871. With time, the porches extended around the sides of the meeting house (e.g., Winona, Ohio
(Conservative), Figure 40); and in some cases they were enclosed as rooms (e.g.. Poplar
Ridge, New York (Conservative), Figure 41, and Orchard Park, New York, Figure 42).'^
Interiors of the Quaker Ideal Meeting Houses
The interiors of Friends meeting houses constructed according to the Quaker Ideal plan are relatively uniform, although many were altered during the twentieth century. The rooms often seemed bare, as the only furniture in sight were benches and perhaps a
Clerk's Table. However, every item had its place, just as every attender had his place.
Twice a week Friends gathered for a meeting for worship. Men Friends would drive the coach to allow the women to enter, and then they would take the coach to the horse sheds. In earliest times, women used upping blocks as an aid to disembarking; an upping block was a set of stairs in the yard of the meeting house. During the nineteenth
'* Edmund W. Sinnott, Meetinghouse and Church in Early NewEngland (NYC: Bonanza Books, 1963), pp.
201-203; Matlack Album, pp. 14-15; Mallary, p. 46. " Puig.
47 century, porches became common, and women Friends could step directly from the coach onto the porch. Many meetings had an enclosed porch for the women (Figure 1). This room was a room for nursing mothers, and in many cases it included a privy. In many meeting houses a door led from this room into the women's meeting room.
The meeting house consisted of two rooms: one for the women and one for the men. The women were expected to occupy the western room, and the men were expected to use the eastern room. These rooms had various names in different yearly meetings. In
Philadelphia they were occasionally called the men's and women's apartments; ^^ in Iowa they were the men's and women's parts;^^ in Ohio they are the men's and women's sides.
Regardless of their name, the two rooms were generally identical. Each room consisted of two rows of benches with an aisle between the rows and an aisle on each end. A second aisle ran the length of the meeting house to separate the ministers' gallery from the general seating. In some meeting houses, the floor is angled towards the ministers' gallery.
The two rooms are separated by a wooden partition. During a meeting for worship the partition would be open so that anyone in the meeting house could hear when someone was speaking. Many partitions consisted of double hung panels; pulling on a special rope would raise one panel into the attic. Sometimes the lower panel would recede into the floor as well. In many meeting houses, the door through the partition could be raised with the upper panels of the partition (examples are Downingtown
[Pennsylvania] and Holly Spring [North Carolina]). A second type of partition is the
'* Lippincott, p. 126.
" Frank L. Mott, "Quaker Boy," in The Palimpsest, 43 (1962), no. 7, p. 310.
48
guillotine type, in which a metal mechanism in the attic raised the partition using ropes
and pulleys (e.g., Stillwater. Ohio). Other partition types were rare. The partitions
installed at Mount Pleasant. Ohio, and Fairfax, Virginia, consists of panels of different
widths. Turning a large roller in the attic raised the partition by rolling the panels
perfectly around the roller. The Great Meeting House in Newport. Rhode Island has a
hinged partition which is held up by hooks anchored in the ceiling.'*
The benches along the north wall of the meeting house are often elevated and face
the other benches. This area is variously called the gallery, the ministers' gallery, the
facing benches, or the ministers" stand (the latter being most commonly used in England).
ministers' Most galleries had three aisles leading to the back bench (left, center, and right), and often the back bench runs the entire length of the room. The ministers' gallery normally consisted of three rows of benches and served as the seating for ministers, elders, overseers, and clerks. The second row was elevated one step, and the back row was elevated two steps. A hand rail was attached to the backs of the front and middle rows of benches to give speakers something to hold onto as they stood to speak. The rail also served as an aid for Friends who have knelt for vocal prayer. In many meeting houses, there was not enough space for someone seated in the middle row of the ministers' gallery to kneel for prayer, which suggests that the Friends appointed to sit there were less likely to offer vocal prayer. Some meetings used two other aids for
Friends who felt stirrings to pray. Some meetings added a kneeling rail to the benches in the gallery, onto which the Friend would kneel; these rails served a secondary purpose of
' The Mount Pleasant partition mechanism is illustrated in Stanton, p. 445.
49 providing a different location for placing one's feet during the worship. The second aid to prayer was the kneeling block. These wooden units consisted of a small wooden box onto which one would kneel. Some meeting houses also installed a sounding board over the
gallery; sounding boards were large horizontal boards which were designed to project
someone's voice out into the room.
An additional piece of furniture in the ministers' gallery was the Clerk's Table. In many meeting houses a wooden board is attached by a hinge to the front facing bench to
serve as the Clerk's Table; these flaps were propped by a wooden dowel which fit into a hole on the bottom of the board. Some of these flap-type tables have provisions for
inkwells or slots to hold pencils. It is also common to see a freestanding Clerk's table.
Historically, each seat in the ministers' gallery was assigned to a specific person,
and everyone else sat in the general seating. Each meeting appointed a committee to assign seats in the ministers' gallery. When a travelling Friend was visiting, someone would give up his/her seat in the gallery for the visitor. The seat on the rear bench nearest the partition was considered the "head of the meeting" where the most valued Friend was
appointed to sit. The seat near the partition on the first facing bench was reserved for the messenger who coordinated the separate business meetings. A common assumption is that ministers sat on the back row, the elders on the middle row, and the overseers on the
first row. This particular practice may have been observed in some locations but was not
applied this specifically in Ohio Yearly Meeting.'^
'' Butler, pp. 892-893. An example of a monthly meeting appointing a committee to assign the seats on the
facing benches is Pennsville Monthly Meeting (Ohio Yearly Meeting), 3-19-1846 and 7-19-1849. Although the ministers' gallery was historically reserved for appointed Friends, only the Conservative Friends
50
One additional interior architectural element was the youth's gallery. Historically,
Quakers have used the upper floor seating area for the young people. This large interior
balcony-like seating area would often run along the southern wall of a meeting house and
rest on columns in the meeting room below. In some meetings, the youth's gallery also
ran along the east and west walls. The youth's gallery was enclosed with a railing and
^'^ divided by the partition.
During a meeting for worship, Friends would gather and sit in silence unless
someone felt a call to speak. Those feeling a calling to minister (meaning speak during meeting) would stand if physically able.^' Anyone could stand and speak (except those
who had been asked not to do so for some reason). After about 1800 it seems that most
Friends kept their eyes closed, while speaking or listening.^^ Men Friends who stood to minister were expected to remove their hats; some women Friends would remove their bonnet but not their head covering. By 1800 Quaker ministers had adopted a particular
meeting maintain this tradition today. Visiting liberal Friends occasionally annoy Conservative Friends unintentionally by sitting on the facing benches. *" Quakers historically have not called the youth's gallery the gallery. For example, when Browin wrote that the women's messengers would escort the men's messengers to the gallery during business meeting, she did not mean that the men's messengers went into the balcony-like area, but to the facing bench area. Frances W. Browin, A Century of Race Street Meeting House 1856—1956 (Philadelphia: Central
Philadelphia Monthly Meeting, 1956), p. 11. On occasion a Friend who stood would not begin to speak immediately. Once when Samuel Comfort rose to speak, he stood silently for a few moments. Someone in a comer said, "The Friend is not heard in this part of the house," to which Samuel replied, "I haint said nothin' yet." Lippincott, p. 131. This development bothered Joseph Hoag, a recorded minister in New York Yearly Meeting. He complained in his journal "After sitting in the meeting some length of time under a weight of exercise, I felt constrained to rise. Looking to the right hand, and to the left, I saw several on the fi'ont seats, who appeared to be fast asleep, and a number in the body of the meeting, in the same situation. I concluded it would be of no use to preach to them, but feeling no release, I rose, and after saying a few words, I spoke out with a sharp tone of voice, "Friends, do wake up..." Journal of the Life and Gospel Labors of that Devoted
Servant and Minister of Christ, Joseph Hoag (Sherwoods NY: David Heston, 1860), p. 257.
51 rhythm during their ministry known as the "sing-song."^ The sing-song consisted of both intonations and pauses of varying lengths. Historically, Friends speaking in ministry began by quoting a portion of Scripture (sometimes a single verse, but a recitation of a whole chapter is not uncommon). The Friend often would elaborate upon the sense of the
passage or how it should be applied. Until the twentieth century, ministers shied away from autobiographical material unless the thrust of the message dealt with an interaction with God (a testimony).
Praying was a variation of ministry. Friends have traditionally assumed that a special unction was necessary for public prayer and have rejected appointed prayers. A
Friend feeling a calling to pray would kneel; if the Friend were male, he would remove his hat. After saying, "Heavenly Father," the Friend would pause because everyone present was expected to stand while someone prayed publicly. In this case, all men
Friends were expected to remove their hats.^"^ Everyone would remain standing until the praying Friends said "Amen" and sat down again. The practice of standing for prayer was
discontinued at different times in different localities, beginning in the 1 870s among the midwestem Hicksites and ending in Ohio in 1967.
The meeting for worship generally consisted of silent expectant waiting interrupted occasionally by ministry or prayer. Testimonies and singing have been less
common but are offered as well. Once it seems that no further offerings are forthcoming,
two previously appointed Friends called the timers shake hands; everyone else is
*^ While the sing-song pattern is mentioned in the historical records of most yearly meetings, it is only practiced by a few Friends in Ohio Yearly Meeting today. *" Maryland Yearly Meeting included an article in its first discipline that Friends should treat with any
"who wear their hatts on when Friends prays in ye power of God," quoted in Carroll, p. 61.
52
expected to shake hands with those seated nearby and thereby "break the meeting." Once
people have begun to stand and interact, the meeting is said to have "risen."*^
Richard L. Bisset recorded a visit to the Greater Meeting House in Philadelphia in
1801 and left a lucid account of the meeting for worship there.
We arrived at the meeting house - which is very spacious - it was thronged
- with persons of both sexes The men divided from the women . . . We all sat with
our hats on... At length everything being quite quiet, an old woman got [up] to
address a prayer to the Almighty. Immediately every person arose, and the men
doffed their hats. The prayer was short but I could not well hear it. Being finished
a dead silence reigned for some time. An elderly man then got up and addressed
the audience; neither his manner nor the matter of his discourse pleased me...
Two or three women at intervals spoke what I thought quite as great nonsense as
the men who had preceded them.
An elderly man, [William] Savery, who is a famous preacher it seems
among them, at length got up, he in very plain and unaffected language ...
[assured] them that the time given up to the service of the Almighty would not be
thrown away. In a word this man was the only one who appeared to me to
understand what he said himself, or could make other people comprehend his
discourse. Shortly after this exhortation, the elders shook hands with each other,
and this being the signal of the assembly's being dissolved, we all got up and
^^ departed.
Most Conservative meetings last an hour (or more), and most liberal meetings last forty-five minutes. *^ ,ji» Quoted in Garfinkel, pp. 58-59.
53
David Furnas, an elderly Friend at Waynesville, Ohio, gave an address on
traditional Quakerism in 1903 and described worship during his childhood this way:
My recollection when about ten years old was of well-filled galleries where
the men all dressed in the regular style adopted by Friends of that day, with their
broad-brimmed hats on their heads during all the meeting hour, except when a
minister arose to speak he laid his hat aside until he had delivered his discourse;
and the women with their uniform style of bonnets and dress sat religiously quiet,
except when one of them was exercised in the ministry she always removed her
bonnet. When any one appeared in supplication [prayer] the whole congregation
"^^ arose and remained standing. . . until the prayer was ended.
Business meetings were considered an extension of worship. At the end of
worship, one of the timers would rise and say, "If Friends are ready, we might turn to the
business of the meeting." After a short pause to see if someone has something needing to
be expressed in worship, the men's messengers would proceed to close the partition and
non-members were expected to depart. At this time the Clerks would begin to organize
their papers on each side of the partition. The men's Clerk and Assistant Clerk would
remove their hats and place them on pegs on the wall. Normally the Clerk would sit on
the eastern side of the table and the Assistant Clerk on the western side. The Clerk was
responsible for the facilitation of the business. He would announce the business matter at
hand, and the Assistant Clerk would read any relevant documents. Then Friends would
discuss the matter. Friends were expected to seek the mind of God on each issue.
David Furnas, "History of Miami Monthly Meeting Hicksite - From 1828 to 1903," in Friends Miami
^. Monthly Meeting Centennial (Waynesville OH: Miami Gazette, 1903), pp. 46-47.
54 regardless of their own particular inclination. When someone addressed an issue in a
manner satisfactory to other Friends, it was common to hear others follow by stating,
"That Friend speaks my mind." Once the Clerk understood the sense of the meeting, he
would record the decision and read it for approval by the body. If the matter concerned the Friends across the partition or required their approval, the Clerk would copy the decision onto a slip of paper for the messenger. Most meetings had a special slot in the partition for the messengers to drop the slip of paper for the other side to consider. If both the women and men agreed on a particular issue, the meeting was in unity and would proceed. If not. Friends normally resorted to appointing a committee much like the
federal government. Throughout this process of decision making, periods of silence were
frequent.
Arch Street Meeting House
One of the few exceptions to the Quaker Ideal Plan during its dominance was the
Arch Street Meeting House (Figures 43 and 44). Constructed in 1804 to serve as the
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting House, Arch Street was probably the first architect-designed
Friends meeting house in North America. The large two-story building consists of
separate meeting rooms for the men and women with a connecting hall in between. This
connecting hall is expressed on the exterior in the form of a projecting three-bay element
with a pediment; the men's and women's rooms are five-bay. Originally the interior
meeting rooms were identical, with the normal facing benches and sounding board.
55
youth's gallery and general seating. Just as with the Greater Meeting House, one of the
first uses of Arch Street was for the yearly meeting committee on the discipline.^^
The large attendance at the various yearly meetings necessitated especially large
buildings, but even the yearly meeting houses tended to follow the Quaker Ideal Plan
(except Arch Street, as mentioned above). Illustrations of New Garden, North Carolina
(Figure 45), Whitewater, Indiana (Figure 46), and Mount Pleasant, Ohio (Figures 47 and
48), all represent Quaker Ideal Plan meeting houses on a larger scale than the smaller
versions elsewhere, without further architectural exploration.
** Bonner, p. 13; Tvaryanas, p. 124; Garfinkel, p. 133. Philadelphia Friends consulted with Benjamin H,
Latrobe for advice in designing the Arch Street Meeting House; Latrobe recommended a round meeting
^^. house with a dome. Garfinkel, pp. 83-84.
56
Chapter IIII.
The Liberal Quaker Branch (Hicksites)
The Quaker world splintered in the mid-nineteenth century into three factions.
Although each of the three factions purported to be the "true" Quakers, each also developed in different directions throughout the remainder of the century. The architecture of each faction reflects the development of each particular movement as they redefined themselves.
The nineteenth century divisions resulted ft^om growing differences in doctrine within Quakerism. Emphasis upon doctrine had waned during the eighteenth century as
Quakers concentrated on defining who they were as a group; the only major book on
Quaker doctrine was Joseph Phips' The Original and Present State of Man, Briefly
Considered. By the turn of the nineteenth century, however, some Friends were concerned about the low state of their meetings. During the first years of the nineteenth
century, some Friends sought to revitalize the Society of Friends by returning to the first principles of Quakerism. The reading of old Quaker books became a favorite pastime of many elders, and references to "primitive" Friends mushroomed in Quaker literature
throughout the first quarter of the nineteenth century.^^
The development of Quaker magazines played a critical role in the growing doctrinal controversy. Charles Osbom began the first specifically Quaker periodical at
*' Joseph Phips, The Original and Present State of Man, Briefly Considered (London Yearly Meeting, 1767); William Hodgson, The Society of Friends in the Nineteenth Century; A Historical View
(Philadelphia: Smith, English & Co., 1875), volume 1, pp. 13-28.
57
Mount Pleasant, Ohio, in 1817. Although the goal of the magazine was the abolition of
slavery, it was highly successful among Quakers. Elisha Bates, a recorded minister in
Ohio Yearly Meeting, purchased the printing shop in 1818 and broadened the scope of
the magazine. During his travels in the ministry. Bates would read the old Quaker books
found in the homes of Quakers scattered across eastern Ohio in an effort to locate articles
for his magazine. In 1824, Bates produced a new book Doctrines of Friends which set
forth his understanding of the worldview of the "primitive" Friends. Bates was interested
in the restatement of doctrine and gave little space to the inward manifestation of Jesus in the heart. This lack of emphasis on inward transformation led many Friends to caution
others about Bates's writings. Later another Friend set forth an alternate understanding of
early Quakers. He followed one of the more liberal travelling ministers on his journeys
^° and copied his sermons. This travelling minister was Elias Hicks.
Without restating the details, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting divided into two
factions in 1827 due to differences of opinion about Elias Hicks. The next year, the yearly meetings of New York, Baltimore, Ohio, and Indiana divided into Hicksite and
anti-Hicksite, or Orthodox, factions. These divisions were occasionally violent, as when the Ohio Hicksites threw the Clerk of Ohio Yearly Meeting out of the meeting house so
'^ Elisha Bates, Doctrines of Friends (Mount Pleasant OH: Ohio Yearly Meeting, 1824); Marcus T.C. Gould, Sermons Delivered by Elias Hicks and Edward Hicks in Friends Meetings, New York, in 5' Month.
1825 (NYC: J.V. Seaman, 1825). The substance of this analysis of trends in the early nineteenth century
comes from an earlier paper I presented to Ohio Yearly Meeting in 1994 entitled "Ohio General Meeting
and the Primitive Friends." H. Larry Ingle saw the Hicksites as the "conservatives" who sought to preserve
traditional Quakerism from English Friends who were introducing evangelical Christian doctrine into Quakerism. Many authors have attempted to grasp the seeds of the Hicksite controversy, and Ingle managed to pull the varying threads together better than prior attempts. Ingle, Quakers in Conflict: The Hicksite Reformation (Knoxville TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1984).
58
they could appoint their own clerk. Both the Hicksites and Orthodox might best be
understood as two coalitions. The Hicksite coalition consisted of eastern Friends who had
little interest in doctrine; those who distrusted the urban power blocks in Philadelphia,
New York City, and Baltimore; and a minority of the Primitive-minded Friends. The
Orthodox coalition consisted of those Friends who appreciated the English evangelical
ministers who traveled extensively throughout America during the 1820s to 1840s, the
majority of the Primitive-minded Friends, and the overwhelming majority of ministers.
Hicksite Use of tlie Quaker Ideal Plan
Since the earliest Hicksites sought to maintain the Quakerism of their day, they
constructed Quaker Ideal Plan meeting houses whenever there was a need. Early
examples of Hicksite use of the Quaker Ideal are West, Ohio (Figure 49), and Burlington,
New Jersey, both in 1 829. Whenever the local Hicksite meeting was not large, they built
a Simple Doubled Plan meeting house, such as Homeville, Pennsylvania, and Short
Creek, Ohio (Figure 61).^'
Due to its special circumstances, the new Philadelphia Yearly Meeting House was
an exception. The Hicksites were a decided minority in Philadelphia proper, and the
Orthodox majority declined to allow the Hicksites access to any of the meeting houses
(the Hicksites returned the favor elsewhere). In late 1827, Philadelphia Hicksites
purchased a lot on the north side of Cherry Street below Fifth. Following sixty-six days
of strenuous labor, they completed a large 42x100 brick meeting house which came to be
^^ Tvaryanas, pp. 162-165; Bonner, p. 66.
59 called the Cherry Street Meeting House (Figure 50). This large two-story, eight-bay meeting house was located inside a large brick wall; the only surviving illustration of the building shows the wall obscuring a view of the doors. The Cherry Street Meeting House became the site of the women's yearly meeting, and the men used the Green Street
Meeting House.^^
The Hicksite coalition fractured during the 1840s and 1850s. A group of Friends in Indiana Yearly Meeting felt that Quakers needed to take stronger action against slavery, and in 1843 they formed a separate meeting at Green Plains. This group of
Friends eventually took the label of "the Friends of Human Progress," or the
Progressives. They questioned many Quaker folkways during their brief existence and rejected many of these traditions. William Schooley, one of the more traditional Hicksite ministers in Ohio, recorded in his journal in Eighth Month 1847:
Thou art perhaps aware that Green Plain Friends have removed the partition
between the men and the women, having but one set of clerks, allow all to sit in
their meetings for discipline (i.e., including non-members), and permit everyone
so disposed, to minister in their meetings for worship. In view of these
innovations, though they may claim the name of Friends, they are certainly not in
unity with our meeting and cannot therefore be fellowshipped by us. My motive
in writing is to apprise Friends of these things, that they may stand firm in the
Browin, pp. 9-10.
60
Truth, maintain the select capacity of our meetings, guard with firmness against
the spirit of innovation and preserve order in conformity with our discipline.^^
The Progressive Friends introduced many innovations into Hicksite Quakerism, some of which are significant for their impact upon architecture. They rejected the recognition of ministers and elders, thus eliminating the need for facing benches. In addition, eliminating the separate business meetings meant that only one large interior room was needed. Progressive Friends introduced congregational singing into the Society of Friends and in the 1850s dabbled in spiritualism.^'*
Very few Progressive meeting houses were built. They tended to be the majority in those communities where they existed, and they retained possession of the meeting house there. One of the largest concentrations of Progressives was in Columbiana
County, Ohio, where the Progressives took the Grove, New Lisbon, and Sandy Spring
Meeting Houses. One of the few meeting houses erected by the Progressives was
Longwood Meeting House in Chester County, Pennsylvania, in 1853 (Figure 51). This large one-story meeting house featured a front gable, which was a very unusual architectural feature for a Friends meeting house. A large semi-circular vent in the gable added some ornamentation to the front elevation. The building was used by Progressives for annual meetings where papers were presented well into the twentieth century, although the local meeting merged back into the Hicksites within a decade of their
'^ The Journal of William Schooley (Zanesville OH: George Schooley, 1977), pp. 96-97. No comprehensive history of the Progressive Friends has been printed, although several short articles have appeared. The most complete account of the Indiana division is given in Seth E. Fumas Sr.. A History of Indiana Yearly Meeting [Hicksite] (Richmond IN: Indiana Yearly Meeting, 1968), pp. 43-45. '* Seth Fumas, pp. 44-47.
61
founding. The Progressive sentiment grew among younger Hicksites and accomplished
^^ its goals amongst Hicksite Friends during the twentieth century.
The Race Street Meeting House
The erection of a new Philadelphia Yearly Meeting House in 1856 at Race and
Fifteenth Streets produced the first indication that the "spirit of innovation" was at work,
even in the midst of the Progressive schism (Figures 52 and 53). The eighteen-year old
Cherry Street Meeting House became a liability for Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. First,
the surrounding neighborhood shifted from residential to commercial in the intervening
decade and a half, meaning that Friends were challenged to ignore the growing noise
fi-om outside. Second, the building itself was inconvenient. While it held 1,231 people, it
was still too small. Furthermore, it was not well-ventilated and became unbearably hot in the summer. For some unknown reason, the interior acoustics were not satisfactory. As a result, Philadelphia Friends decided to erect a new meeting house.''''
The new Race Street Meeting House resolved some of the problems of the Cherry
Street Meeting House while introducing some new features as well. It consisted of a large two-story, front-gabled building with three entry doors on each gable end. It had an interesting cruciform shape (a true cruciform: [t], which has escaped notice even by those who say that the Merion Meeting House is cruciform). The cruciform shape is created by a large room on the north side of the building for the Monthly Meeting room, a hyphen
The division in Ohio began at New Garden Quarterly Meeting (Hicksite) on Second Month 12"^, 1850 when New Garden Monthly Meeting was laid down as a result of Progressive sympathy. The Longwood Meeting House is picUired in Martha C. Gentry and Paul Rodebaugh, Southern Chester County in Vintage
Photographs (Charleston SC: Arcadia Publishing, 1999), p. 114. Browin, pp. 9-10.
62
composed of committee rooms, and a southern room for the Yearly Meeting. The interior
rooms seated a total of 2.771 people in the two rooms, including the seating in the
youth's galleries.
The Race Street Meeting House is significant in many ways. First, it was one of
the first front-gabled Friends meeting houses in North America. There were few
prototypes for such construction, and the Race Street Meeting House seems to borrow
heavily from the George's Methodist Church House in Philadelphia (Figure 54).^^ While
a hyphen between the two meeting rooms had been used at Arch Street, also resulting in a
centered cross gable, that particular feature had been ignored by Quakers until Race
Street. Third, it is likely that Race Street was the first meeting house built with committee
rooms. In any case, these three elements led to a new type of Hicksite meeting house.
Fourth. Race Street faced east rather than south and helped to establish the idea that
orientation had lost some of its importance.
The Center-Gabled Plan
In 1865. Indiana Yearly Meeting erected a new yearly meeting house in
Richmond. Indiana (Figure 55). This building is a large one and a half story brick
building with a prominent centered cross-gable over the doubled entry door for both men
and women. The windows are paired with arched heads, including some smaller paired
Ibid., pp. 13-16. Someone took the trouble to count the number of bricks used in the Race Street Meeting
House, which was 703,000. Even the new Race Street Meeting House was not large enough to house the ^ large attendance of the yearly meeting. '^ Williams, p. 86.
63
'
windows in the gables. Each bay of the building is framed by decorative brickwork which
also serves to strengthen the wall.^^
A few Hicksite meeting houses built in the following decade borrowed some of
the architectural innovations of the Indiana Yearly Meeting House. West Chester (1868,
Figure 56) and Valley (1871) Meeting Houses, both in Pennsylvania, are both two-story
meeting houses with dominant center gables. Other meeting houses introduced more
innovations. The Kennett Square (Pennsylvania) Meeting House (1873) followed the
Center-Gabled Plan and introduced Gothic pointed windows into the Philadelphia
Hicksite world. The Girard Avenue Meeting House in Philadelphia (1871) had a
projecting center bay with its center gable to form a T-shape building. Fair Hill Meeting
House (Philadelphia, 1882, Figure 57) incorporated a hipped roof with smaller cross-
gables on each end. The front porch had a front extension which served as a proto-porte-
cochere.
Front-Gabled Meeting Houses
A second type of Hicksite architectural experimentation was the front-gabled
meeting house. One of the first front-gabled Hicksite meeting houses was erected at
Reading, Pennsylvania, in 1868 (Figure 58). This one-story, three-bay front-gabled
meeting house was constructed with stone and featured a large semi-circular vent (as at
Race Street) with a datestone in the gable. A large cantilevered porch shades the entry
'* Seth Furnas, p. 53. ""' ^' Bonner, 19, 72, 75; Matlack, Album, vol. 1, pp. 18, 23-26; vol. 5, p. 38.
64
door, which leads into a vestibule. Separate doors open off the vestibule into the interior
rooms. '°'
Later Front-Gabled Plan meeting houses introduced more extensive alterations.
The Swarthmore (Pennsylvania) Meeting House (1879) was a large one-story stone
meeting house with a small hip on the front gable. The building has a T-shaped footprint
due to rear wings. The Swarthmore Meeting House was one of the first Hicksite meeting
houses erected after the uniting of the separate business meetings, meaning that there was
no need for specific rooms for each sex inside. When the West Grove (Permsylvania)
meeting decided to rebuild inside the borough, it erected an unusual meeting house on
Prospect Avenue (1901, Figure 59). This front-gabled meeting house was constructed of
stone and had a large front porch which incorporated a true porte-cochere. There were
eyebrow dormers on the roof, and the windows vary from standard square windows to
pointed and arched head windows. The men and women had been holding joint session
business meetings at West Grove since 1891, so the interior was not divided. Yardley is
an example of a Hicksite meeting house with large pointed windows on the front gable
(Figure 60).'°^
During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the Hicksites engaged in an
unusual activity of "reducing" some of their meeting houses. As they began to hold joint
session business meetings, many local meetings had no need for a large Quaker Ideal
Plan meeting house. After Plumstead Preparative Meeting in Pennsylvania was laid down
in 1867, the Friends there reduced the size of the meeting house in 1875 from an Ideal to
""Bonner, p. 18. '"^ *ii*>' Ibid., p. 18; Gentry, p. 86-87.
65
a simple one-story, three-bay, one room building without a partition. The reducing
campaign was commonly found in Ohio, where at least three meeting houses were
reduced: Concord, Westland (Morgan County), and Plainfield (Figure 62).'°-'
The Twentieth Century
During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Hicksite Friends drifted towards
an acceptance of some elements of the larger American culture. Declining numbers
alarmed many Hicksite leaders, but at the same time they found solace in the growth of
liberal thought in other denominations (particularly the Unitarians). The Hicksite yearly
meetings began to loosen their enforcement of the discipline, resulting in a decline in the
use of distinctive dress and speech. New nationwide committees helped to breathe life
into Hicksite meetings, such as the Young Friends Association and the Friends' Union for
Philanthropic Labor. In the year 1900, the national committees gathered at the same time
and formed a new organization, the Friends General Conference. This annual gathering became a forum for dissemination of ideas and was critical to the continuing
'°'* transformation of the Hicksites into modem Liberal Quakers.
One of the most important events in the emergence of modem Liberal Quakerism was the Manchester Conference in England in 1895. London Yearly Meeting had been unsatisfied with the movement in America to use scriptural literalism to oppose the revival movement without making any attempt to address contemporary thought. At the
Matlack Album, vol. 3, p. 22; archives of Ohio Yearly Meeting. "^ Thomas Hamm, "The Hicksite Quaker World, 1875—1900," in Quaker History (vol. 89, no. 2, Fall
2000), pp. 17-41.
66
Manchester Conference, a series of speakers addressed the dissatisfied London Friends
and presented a new interpretation of early Friends. George Fox became a spiritual
thinker who was not "bound" by the text of Scripture; soon after the Conference,
historians began to produce a monumental history of Quakerism to elaborate upon these
new understandings. Conference leaders postulated that modem thought, including the
Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis and evolution, could be accepted into Quakerism as part of a
"^^ new mystical movement and thereby attract outsiders into the faith.
Modem Liberal Quakerism evolved gradually. During the first quarter of the
twentieth century. Liberal Friends ended the practice of recording spiritual gifts and
resorted to appointing people to committees to carry out the work formerly associated with those with gifts. Liberal Friends made some alterations to the operations of the business meeting as well; the Assistant Clerk became the person recording the minutes rather than a "reading" clerk, and the Clerk became solely the presiding officer. During the second quarter of the century. Liberal Friends worked to re-unite the divided branches. Gumeyites and Wilburites on the east coast worked with Liberal Friends in these unions, generally to the benefit of the Liberal Friends. During the last quarter of the twentieth century, non-Christian thought such as Buddhism, Hinduism, and goddess worship have become more accepted throughout Liberal meetings, and the "irmer light" became a replacement for Christ Jesus rather than a continuing manifestation of the
'°^ ministry of Jesus.
'"'Punshon, pp. 209-211. '"* Historians are just now beginning to express interest in the history of Hicksite Quakerism. The most important example of this new interest is the forthcoming book by Thomas Hamm which intends to chronicle the development of Hicksism throughout the nineteenth century.
67
Liberal Quaker architecture in the twentieth century reflects modem thought.
Each of the three general types of meeting house architecture indicates a rejection of the standard Protestant building types and at least a modification of the Quaker Ideal Plan.
Most of them have arranged the interior benches in a square pattern as well; the old
Progressive Friends rejection of spiritual gifts led to the understanding that equality of all people precludes such recognition. The three Liberal Friends building types of the
'°'' twentieth century are the Modified Ideal, Purchased Residences, and the Modem.
The Modified Ideal (1930—1960)
Throughout the twentieth century. Liberal Friends have occasionally constmcted new meeting houses which are variants of the Quaker Ideal. Few of these buildings have the six-bay exterior with doors in the second and fifth bays, although the Liberal Friends did constmct some Quaker Ideal Plan meeting houses during the twentieth century. None of them has separated meeting rooms for the men and the women.
An early Modified Ideal is the Chestnut Hill Meeting House in Philadelphia
(1931, Figure 63). This building is a large one-story L-shaped concrete block building.
The fagade consists of two parts: a large projecting cross-gabled pedimented portico and three windows. The entry doors lead to a room opening into the rear ell.'°^
Another important Modified Ideal meeting house is Cambridge, Massachusetts.
This meeting is an early example of the New Meeting Movement, which was an outreach
The Modified Ideal is my term for those meeting houses incorporating small alterations to the traditional Quaker Ideal Plan. '™ Bonner, p. 83; Lippincott, pp. 62-63.
68
into the academic communities around the nation to settle Liberal Friends meetings.
Cambridge Meeting is located about half a mile from Harvard Square. The meeting house
is a one-story brick 33x59 building connected by a porte-cochere to an adjacent office
and fellowship building. Cambridge Meeting House follows the British end-gallery plan;
the entry doors are on one end of the building, leading first into a vestibule and then into
the main meeting room. Benches in the main meeting room are arranged in a square
pattern. In a 1952 article, Cambridge Friends indicated that "the Meeting was taken more
seriously by non-Friends of the community, and by Friends from other Meetings resident
"^^ in Cambridge" once they moved out of their former college hall facilities.
Later examples of the Modified Ideal Plan continue the Liberal experimentation
to find a new form suitable to their needs. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (Figure 64) is a one-
story, five-bay meeting house with two doors on the fa9ade and entry hoods barkening
back to colonial entryways. Chapel Hill, North Carolina, is a one-story, six bay building
with doors in the first, fourth, and sixth bays. The fifth bay in this meeting house is a
large floor to ceiling window. The Kennett Square (Pennsylvania) Meeting House (1959)
is a one-story, seven-bay Modified Ideal with double doors in the second and fourth bays
(Figure 65)."°
'*" Bonner, p. 16; Eleanor W. Taber, "Quaker Building and Builders VI," in The American Friend. First
Month 17^ 1952, p. 23. "" ^i^- Bonner, pp. 48, 88.
69
Purchased Residences
Most of the meetings which have purchased residences belong to the New
Meeting Movement as well. Activity by national Quaker organizations led to the creation
of Liberal meetings across North America throughout the twentieth century, particularly
near colleges or other locations more favorable to modem thought. The New Meetings
Movement blossomed during the Vietnam War, when scores of people joined Liberal
meetings for reasons of nonviolence or equality but with little interest in broader Quaker
thought.
Purchased Residences now serving as Liberal meetings share some common
features. They tend to be two-story houses erected around 1900 with somewhat open
floorplans. Often the main meeting room is the former dining room or living room. Other
rooms are used for committee work and for the library. Many meetings rent out a portion
of the building to help cover the mortgage costs. Among examples of Purchased
Residences are Charlotte, North Carolina (purchased 1960); Raleigh, North Carolina
(purchased 1969, Figure 66); North Meadow, hidianapolis (Figure 67); Atlanta (Figure
68) and Augusta, Georgia; and Cleveland, Ohio.'"
Modern Meeting Houses
The impetus for investigating non-traditional meeting house architecture began on
the west coast. Since the 1950s, these modem designs have in some way reflected an
emphasis upon architectural metaphors for the inner light. A secondary feature common
ti^- Ibid., pp. 54-56; Carolina Quakers Tercentenary, p. 133.
70
'
on Modem Liberal meeting houses is an expressive roof, although this feature is not
universal. Each of these buildings presents a clear break with traditional religious
architecture, both non-Quaker and Quaker.
Orange Grove, in Pasadena, California, was one of the initial meeting houses to
incorporate modem elements (Figure 69). This one-story bungalow-like meeting house
features a prominent cross-gable roof with a band of glazing around the first floor. The
roof at Orange Grove includes a front porch with a wide overhang, shading the windows
' on the entry.
Two Arizona meeting houses constmcted during the 1950s emphasized the light
and expressive roof themes. Tucson Meeting House was built in 1951 and consisted of a
one-story building with wide eaves. Part of the building is further recessed under the roof
as well. Phoenix Meeting House (1956, Figure 70) was constmcted as a ramada, or an
unwalled building with temporary partition screens for use on windy days. The building
"^ consists primarily of four comer posts supporting a mostly flat roof
Once eastern Liberal Friends decided to build Modem-style meeting houses, the
basic elements were in place. Southampton, Pennsylvania (1969, Figure 71) is an
example of an early eastem Modem meeting house. It is a large square building located
in a wooded area. The walls are composed of blocks laid in a somewhat tectonic pattern,
with large ribs, glazing, and recessed areas. The roof is hipped with a large sunlight built
into a stubby steeple-like element, flooding the interior with natural light."''
Orange Grove Meeting House, Campbell Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. "^ The American Friend, 5/10/1951, p. 157; 8/23/1956, p. 274. "'' «i^ Bonner, p. 21.
71
The most recent Liberal Quaker meeting house built in North America continues
the interplay between light and roofs. The Live Oak Meeting House in Houston, Texas
(Figure 72) was designed by the artist James Turrell of Arizona, who has investigated the
use of light with art throughout his career. The building features wide overhanging eaves
and a nine-bay fa9ade with doors in the even-numbered bays. Inside, benches are
arranged in a square under the sloping ceiling which leads to a roof aperture. This twelve
"^ foot square aperture can be opened to flood the room with natural light.
In conclusion, the Liberal Friends are no longer constructing the Quaker Ideal
Plan. While some meetings still choose to purchase large residences of the early twentieth
century for use, it is also common for liberal meetings to erect buildings which reflect the
latest modem architecture.
"' William L. Hamilton, "Quaker Simple, Simply Beautifiil," in The New York Times, 1/11/2001, p. Fl, FIG.
72
Chapter V.
The Orthodox Conservative Quaker Branch (Wilburites)
The development of Orthodox, or non-Hicksite, architectural developments in
North America is much more complicated. One of the causes for this complication is the
later division of the Orthodox Friends, which resulted in two of the three great Quaker
traditions emerging from the separations of the mid-nineteenth century: the Wilburite /
'^ Orthodox Conservative branch and the Gumeyite / Pastoral branch.^
The history of Orthodox (1827-1854) and Wilburite (since 1854) architecture is
easily divisible into two periods. Following the Hicksite divisions, the Orthodox
constructed meeting houses using the Quaker Ideal prototype. As the Orthodox divided in
the next generation between the Wilburites and Gumeyites, the Wilburites continued the
use of the Quaker Ideal and also developed a slight variant (the Chesterfield Plan). The
second period is one of architectural experimentation, beginning at Pasadena, California,
in 1895 and ending at Middleton, Ohio, in 1958.
In the years immediately following the Hicksite schism of 1827-1830, the two
factions labored over the issue of ownership of existing meeting houses. Each side
claimed to represent a continuation of the pre-separation Society of Friends, and therefore
"* Understandings of Wilburite Friends vary. The standard text is William P. Taber, The Eye of Faith: A History of Ohio Yearly Meeting. Conser\'ative (Bamesville OH: Ohio Yearly Meeting, 1985). Taber's work emphasizes the mystical strain of Wilburism. John Brady's Short History of Conserx'ative Friends
(Richmond IN: 1992) is much more concise but covers the whole Wilburite world in greater detail. Brady
sought to compile a history sympathetic to the Wilburite point of view, since Quaker historians tend to
.^- portray Wilburites as too interested in tradition (i.e., Jones, Williams, and Thomas).
73
each side claimed possession of the meeting houses. As events unfolded, three
mechanisms developed for overcoming the impasse.
The least satisfactory option was to grant possession to one faction and exclude
the other faction. Many meetings on both sides resorted to this mechanism. Few meetings
were evenly divided, so often the minority party was locked out of the meeting house.
For example, the Orthodox managed to exclude the Hicksites from using any meeting
house located in Philadelphia, and the Hicksites pushed the Orthodox Friends out of the
Richland Meeting in Guernsey County, Ohio. The exclusionary option brought the local
"^ controversy to a speedy conclusion but fostered uncharitableness between the factions.
A more satisfactory, but not ideal, option was to share the meeting house. Since
most meeting houses were already divided by the partition, it was a simple compromise
to allow the Orthodox to meet on one side and allow the Hicksites to sit on the other side.
In other cases, one side met in the morning while the other met in the afternoon. While
this option eliminated the possibility of one side locking the other out of the building, it
had other disadvantages. On several occasions, one of the two groups shifted the time of
assembly slightly. This action meant that one faction would hold meeting, listen to the
other faction arrive half way through their service, and then leave halfway through the
other service. The annoyance associated with scheduling meetings included the timing of
the larger business meetings, since quarterly and yearly meetings were multi-day events
that precluded one faction from using a shared meeting house during that time frame.
Throughout the remainder of the century, local meetings sharing a meeting house
«i4t Browin, p. 8;Taber, p. 41.
74
complained about the inconveniences associated with holding quarterly and yearly
meetings in shared meeting houses."^
Ironically the most satisfactory solution developed was the least used. In several
instances, the meeting property was sold at public auction. Either faction, or another
party, could bid on the property. The purchase money was then divided evenly between
the Hicksites and Orthodox. An example of this solution was the meeting house in Salem,
Ohio. The disadvantages of a shared meeting house weighed on the two groups in Salem,
which was the seat of Salem Quarterly Meeting. Finally around 1 840 the two chose to
sell the property. In this case, a third party purchased the property. The Hicksites used
their proceeds to erect a new meeting house at Second and Green Streets, while the
Orthodox erected a new meeting house on Dry Street."^
One meeting arrived at an interesting variant to the third option. White River
Meeting House in Randolph County, Indiana, straddled the property line of two farms.
One of the farms was owned by a Hicksite, the other by an Orthodox. The meeting
actually decided to cut the meeting house in half; each side moved away its half and
reconstituted the missing side.'^*^
There was a remarkable uniformity in Orthodox meeting houses. The Quaker
Ideal plan was still suited to their needs, and the Orthodox erected this style in most
instances when they needed to erect a new meeting house after a division (e.g., Richland
[Ohio], Figure 73, and Nottingham and Little Britain [Pennsylvania], Figure 74). The
"*Taber,p. 104. '" Pearl A. Walker, The Story ofSalem Friends From 1803 to 1973 (Salem OH: 1973), p. 5-7. '^^ ,^- Gregory Hinshaw, p. 101.
75
new meeting house was often constructed next to the old one. At Fallsington
(Pennsylvania), an interesting situation resulted in which three meeting houses stood
within eyeshot of each other, each of them situated along a strict east-to-west axis (an
earlier meeting house, no longer in use, had been converted into a store after 1790). There
is little architectural distinction among meeting houses erected immediately following the
division; both parties constructed the Quaker Ideal meeting house type unless smallness
of numbers necessitated the use of the Simple Doubled Plan (e.g., Chesterfield, New
Jersey, Figure 75).
Tension in the Orthodox movement began within a decade. In 1837, a British
Friend named Joseph John Gumey traveled extensively throughout North America. His
stated concern was to help heal the division between the Orthodox and the Hicksites, but
Gumey was also presenting a new vision for Friends. He and many other British Friends
sought to revitalize Quakerism through a specific emphasis upon the Bible and the
acceptance of Protestant terminology. Primitive Friends challenged Gumey's writings
throughout his trip. While in New England, two Primitive Friends took time individually
to speak with Gumey about his views; while they were unsuccessfiil in convincing him of
the rightness of their cause, they became Primitive heroes afterwards. An anonymous
document published during Gumey's trip illustrated the differences between Gumey's
sentiments and statements by early Friends.'^'
Troubles in New England Yearly Meeting precipitated a division there. The
majority of the yearly meeting supported the more Protestant views of Gumey, and when
'"' The best history of the Gumeyites in the nineteenth century is Thomas D. Hamm, The Transformation of t^^ American Quakerism: Orthodox Friends, 1800— / 907 (Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 1988)
76 they determined that the anonymous document had been written by Rhode Island school teacher and Friends minister John Wilbur, they laid down his monthly meeting and disowned him. The Clerks of Ohio and North Carolina Yearly Meetings were traveling in the ministry at the time and decided to speak to the parties involved and determine the facts in dispute. The pro-Gumey faction took the significant action of not endorsing the travelling minutes of these ministers. In 1845, Rhode Island Quarterly Meeting divided between the supporters of Wilbur and the supporters of Gumey. The yearly meeting recognized the representatives of the pro-Gumey Rhode Island Yearly Meeting, resulting
'^^ in a division in New England Yearly Meeting.
Throughout the remainder of the 1840s, Orthodox yearly meetings discussed how to handle the sparring New England parties. When the other Orthodox yearly meetings met following the New England division, they received epistles from both the Wilburite and Gumeyite yearly meetings there. Ohio and Philadelphia Yearly Meetings recognized the Wilburite yearly meeting, but each of the other Orthodox yearly meetings recognized the Gumeyite body. The Orthodox umbrella organization, the General Committee, chose to seat Gumeyite representatives from New England and then from New York when that yearly meeting divided in 1847. By 1853, the General Committee demanded that
Philadelphia and Ohio Yearly Meetings rescind their recognition of the Wilburites in
New England. It sent a committee to visit the two in 1854 to deliver an ultimatum: recognize the Gumey party in New England or face disassociation.'^^
'^- Brady, p. 6-10; Taber, p. 61. '^^ Taber, p. 70. No historian has investigated the history of the General Committee, although it represented the only body higher than a yearly meeting during the nineteenth century.
77
The watershed year in the Wilbur-Gumey division was 1854. There were many
visitors from other yearly meetings at Ohio Yearly Meeting that year, including the
widow of Joseph John Gumey and the Clerk of the Wilburite New England Yearly
Meeting. As a result of the dissension, Ohio Yearly Meeting divided into two camps;
about 60% of the membership was Wilburite and 40% Gumeyite. Philadelphia Yearly
Meeting and the two Wilburite bodies (New England and New York) recognized the
Wilburite Ohio Yearly Meeting, but each of the other Orthodox yearly meetings
recognized the Gumeyite Ohio Yearly Meeting. This recognition caused a minor division
in Bahimore Yearly Meeting and in Salem Quarter of Indiana Yearly Meeting (located in
Iowa), producing two more Wilburite groups. [The Wilbur-Gumey division filtered
down through each organization, ending at Chesterfield Monthly Meeting in Ohio on
10/18/1856.]'^'*
The latter half of the 1850s witnessed a fracturing of the Wilburite world.
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting avoided a Wilbur-Gumey division by choosing not to
receive epistles from any other yearly meeting. Ohio Yearly Meeting (Wilburite)
followed suit. As a result of this decision, the other Wilburite bodies (Baltimore, New
England, and New York Yearly Meetings and Salem Quarterly Meeting in Iowa) opened
correspondence among each other and became known as Primitive Friends. Dissatisfied
Primitives in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting called a special general meeting to consider
their situation and decided to separate, forming Fallsington General Meeting. Ohio
Primitives followed their lead and formed Ohio General Meeting. The Primitive Friends
'^^ ,^. Ibid., 63-105; Short Creek Quarterly Meeting (Gumeyite), 1 1-15-1856.
78
circle was complete, but it soon fractured. Without going into detail, by 1870 the
Primitive Friends had divided into Otisite/Kollite, Kingite, Maulite/Lambom, and
'^^ Remnant factions.
The Wilburite Use of the Quaker Ideal Plan.
The Wilburite and Primitive Friends composed the Wilburite branch, and they
shared a common architecture. Most of the new meeting houses resulting from the several
divisions were derived from the Quaker Ideal model, such as Poplar Ridge, New York
(Figure 41). The Quaker Ideal continued in use among the Wilburites until the twentieth
century. It was the favored form for Conservative Friends who later separated from the
Gumeyites and joined the Wilburite Friends; all of the meeting houses of Western Yearly
Meeting (Conservative) with extant photos seem to follow the Quaker Ideal Plan. Among
the last examples of the Ideal use were Fairhope, Alabama, c. 1910, and Friendsville,
North Carolina, in 1927. The early exceptions were in Iowa, where a modified meeting
'^^ house shape was popular among Wilburites.
The Chesterfield Plan.
The Chesterfield Meeting House in Morgan County, Ohio (Figure 76), was based
upon the nearby Pennsville Meeting House. During the mid-1 830s, the brick Pennsville
'"' Although it is not widely available, the standard history of early Primitive groups is still William
Hodgson, The Society of Friends in the Nineteenth Century (Philadelphia: Wm. Hodgson, 1875-1876). Brady gives a quick simimary history of the various Primitive groups, pp. 10-17, 32. '^* Willard Heiss, A History of Western Yearly Meeting of Conservative Friends and the Separation of 1877 tii*-' (Indianapolis IN: John Woolman Press, 1963), pp. 18-19.
79
(Ohio) Meeting House sat on a hill a few yards east of the location of the present
Pennsville Meeting House in Embree Park and was too small to hold all who came to worship there. However, the meeting could not easily enlarge the meeting house due to the slope of the land to the east and west. Therefore the meeting decided to remove the southern wall of the meeting house and add an additional ten feet onto the facade. This decision gave the new meeting house a more compact feel, since the building as a whole was more square than before. The addition made the building unstable, and the Pennsville
Meeting House collapsed in 1843.'^^
Chesterfield Monthly Meeting was a daughter of Pennsville Monthly Meeting, and its 1838 meeting house was a frame version of the brick Pennsville Meeting House.
Still standing, Chesterfield is an almost square meeting house with a steeply sloped roof.
'^* The interior was identical to the Quaker Ideal style.
While a handfiil of other meeting houses in North America also had a more square footprint, only Chesterfield made an impact upon Quaker architecture. Another daughter of Pennsville Monthly Meeting, Hopewell Meeting House (Morgan Co., Ohio), was
constructed in 1 842 and followed the new pattern. The builder of this particular building was Caleb Gregg, who later moved to Iowa and helped to build Lynn Meeting House according to the Chesterfield Plan. Lynn became a Primitive meeting and introduced the
'^^ Chesterfield Plan into the Wilburite splinter groups.
'" Pennsville Monthly Meeting, 1-17-1833, 3-2-1833, and 11-16-1843. '"* Seth Beeson Hinshaw, "A History of the Chesterfield Meeting House, in Friendly Notes, vol. 2, no. 2
(1997), pp. 2-5. '^' Lynn later joined Ohio Yearly Meeting and was renamed Hopewell after Gregg's home meeting in Ohio. Hopewell Meeting House in Ohio stands as a residence, and Hopewell Iowa was moved and became the Paullina Meeting House.
80
The Chesterfield Plan became an alternative meeting house type at a time when
the Gumeyites were on the verge of casting off the Quaker Ideal plan. Wilburite and anti-
Gumeyite Friends across North America looked increasingly to Ohio Yearly Meeting as
the leader of non-Gumey Orthodox Quakerism, and the Chesterfield Plan was clearly
associated with Ohio Friends. The Iowa Conservative Friends erected several
Chesterfield Plan meeting houses following the divisions during the 1870s. At West
Branch, Iowa, the Conservative meeting house was built according to the Chesterfield
Plan and stood in clear opposition to the Quaker Ideal Gumeyite meeting house (Figures
77 and 78). No photo could be located of the Wilburite meeting house in West Branch
(named West Cedar), but the nearby Hickory Grove Meeting House (Figure 79) was a
Wilburite meeting house which followed the Quaker Ideal plan.
While the Chesterfield Plan had been popular outside of Ohio Yearly Meeting,
there had been few opportunities for its use in its indigenous yearly meeting. Several new
opportunities emerged in the late 1870s. In 1872, the Wilburites and Gumeyites in Salem
(Ohio) decided to stop sharing the meeting house. The Gumeyites bought out the
Wilburite interest in the meeting property, and the Wilburites constructed a new brick
meeting house on Sixth Street (Figure 80). This modified Chesterfield Plan meeting
house included a hallway running down the southern side of the building fi-om the women's facilities to the men's facilities, with a large library in between. The mechanism
'^'^ for raising the partition was located in the library.
Walker, p. 13.
81
An additional Chesterfield Plan meeting house was constructed in 1878 for the use of Ohio Yearly Meeting. The Ohio Gumeyites sued the Wilburites in court and wrestled control of the yearly meeting boarding school from the Wilburites. Deprived of their school, the Wilburites decided to construct a new one east of Bamesville, Ohio.
Soon after making this decision, the Wiburites also decided not to hold any more yearly meeting sessions in the old Ohio Yearly Meeting House in Mount Pleasant. The old
Stillwater Meeting House, an elongated quarterly meeting house similar in plan to that of
Cain in Pennsylvania, was demolished. The new Stillwater Meeting House (Figure 1) was
a large brick building which followed the Chesterfield Plan. It was often compared to the old Ohio Yearly Meeting House at Mount Pleasant; the most obvious difference was that
Stillwater does not have the northern doors which the Hicksites used in 1828 to throw the
Clerk of the Yearly Meeting into the yard.'^'
The Chesterfield Plan remained in use by the Wilburites and the Conservatives.
Since the meeting houses were so close to being square in shape, later versions were only four bays deep. An early instance of the four-bay variety is the Winona (Ohio) Meeting
House (1895), which was also the first instance of a wrap-around porch on three sides of
a Wilburite meeting house. One of the last instances of the four-bay Chesterfield Plan is
West Grove Meeting House (1916) in North Carolina (Figure 81). The latter meeting was the locafion of the last Conservative division and a remarkable statement about the
'^^ vitality of the Chesterfield Plan as a symbol of unity with Ohio Wilburites.
An image of the penultimate Stillwater Meeting House is given in Stanton, p. 436. '^^ When Gumeyites locked the doors of the Chatham Meeting House in North Carolina during a c. 1910 visit by Zebedee Haines, a travelling minister from West Grove, Pennsylvania, the more conservative
Friends separated and built a new meeting house which they named for Haines's home meeting.
82
While Philadelphia Yearly Meeting remained in control of the Wilburites, many
of their new meeting houses diverged from the Quaker Ideal Plan. The driving force
behind experimentation during the latter decades of the nineteenth century was the
decision to merge the business meetings. During the 1870s, Philadelphia Orthodox
Friends built several Simple Doubled Plan meeting houses with a single interior room.
These one-story, three-bay meeting houses incorporated expressive chimneys built
according to the new chimney and fireplace experiments of J. Pickering Putnam (e.g.,
West Philadelphia Meeting House, Figure 82, and Chester, Pennsylvania). West Grove,
Pennsylvania, was erected in 1903 to serve as the new Western Quarterly Meeting House
(Figure 83). The interior of West Grove consists of one large room; separate rooms for
men and women were not necessary because all of the women's business meetings had
been merged into the men's meetings already throughout the Quarter. However, West
Grove featured a projecting central bay which encompasses an entry vestibule. In
addition, a fellowship wing on the western side of the meeting house was constructed at
the time of erection (1903) as a cross-gabled element. A pointed window on this
fellowship wing reflected the Philadelphia willingness to use this feature which first
appeared among Philadelphia Friends at Beach Haven in 1 880. A later meeting house at
Coatesville, Pennsylvania (Figure 84) is a small one-story, three-bay stone building with
a porte-cochere, also an unusual feature on a nineteenth century Friends meeting
house.'"
Bonner, p. 75; Matlack, "Brief Sketches," vol. 1, p. 229. It can sometimes be difficult to ascertain which of the new meeting houses were designed for the Gumey element and which were designed for the
«jU' Wilburite element in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting.
83
Another Ideal variant used by Wilburite Friends at the end of the nineteenth century was the five-bay Simple meeting house. These meeting houses were one-story, five-bay meeting houses with a door centered in the third bay. The interior was not divided, meaning that no separate business meetings were held in this particular variant.
Examples of this five-bay Simple Plan are Stavanger, Iowa (Figure 85) and Jacksonville,
New York (Figure 86).
Tripled Meeting Houses (1880—1900)
During the 1890s, the Wilburites built several meeting houses which might be called Tripled because there were three interior rooms arranged in succession. In addition, many of them were constructed with large porches. Ironically, one of the important buildings in connection with the tripled plan was the third Pennsville Meeting
House. This 1850 building replaced the earlier meeting house which was rebuilt after partially collapsing in 1843. Friends at Pennsville altered the meeting house in 1865 to form a tripled interior consisting of a schoolroom on the west, a women's room in the middle, and a men's room on the eastern end. This Permsville Meeting House was demolished in 1882 when the existing fi-ame meeting house was erected.
An early example of the Tripled Meeting House is Middleton, Ohio (Figure 87).
Originally constructed in 1858, the meeting house had a small porch on the western side of the meeting house for the women. At some time, this porch was enclosed as a shed addition with a separate entry door under the large fi"ont porch. Whether this enclosing of
the women's porch preceded the erection of the other examples of this Tripled Plan is difficult to determine, since the Middleton Meeting House was demolished in 1999.
84
However, the Tripled Plan was used at Ridge, Ohio (Figure 88) and Pasadena, CaHfomia
(Figure 89). Pasadena was built by Ohio Wilburites and is intriguing due to the elaborate
front porch, which incorporates gabled hoods. The westernmost room was further broken
down into a fellowship room, a kitchen, and bathrooms for the women and the men. This
was one of the earliest instances of a kitchen in a Wilburite meeting house (even today
only about half of the Conservative meeting houses have kitchens).
Wilburite Modernism: Middleton (1959)
During the twentieth century, Conservative Friends constructed few meeting
houses, and the majority of them have reflected styles of the earlier century. The
exception is their most recent meeting house, Middleton, Ohio (Figure 90). This meeting
house was the first Ohio Conservative meeting house erected after the discontinuance of
the separate men's and women's business meetings, and it was built during the time when
the Modernist movement was seeking to unite Friends across North America. Several
aspects of the Middleton Meeting House reflect the Quaker thought of the time. It is a
long, one-story, six bay brick meeting house with an end gabled roof However, instead
of having two separate entrances on the side for the men and the women, there is only
one entrance, located in the third bay. Most of the time. Friends enter the meeting house
through the door in the gable end of the building. The interior is not divided into separate
men's and women's rooms; furthermore, the benches are arranged in a square pattern.
Middleton is unique among Conservative Friends in these respects.
During the latter half of the twentieth century. Conservative Friends have lost
J., much of their membership. Some of this loss can be attributed to the unifications; most
85
Conservative Friends feel that the unifications have erased their witness in the unified
yearly meetings. Furthermore, the influx of new members during the last quarter of the
century and changes in education have introduced modem religious thought into
Conservative Friends, especially in Iowa and North Carolina. While Ohio Yearly
Meeting witnessed a great deal of turmoil over these trends, it also received an influx of
new members who valued the ancient Quaker testimonies. Many of the new members had
been affiliated with the liberal Friends and were distressed by the disappearance of a
Christian witness in those bodies. During the 1980s, Ohio Yearly Meeting began to turn
away fi-om the more liberal Quaker trends and re-emphasize its traditional Christian
beliefs. This new movement has been fostered by two factions in the yearly meefing (the
"charasmatics" and the "neo-Wilburites") which often stand at odds with each other but
support the movement away fi-om the more secular worldview of twentieth century
modernism. This restatement of the ancient thrust of Quakerism is reflected in the newest
Conservative meeting. When some scattered Conservative Friends in southeastern
Pennsylvania began to meet together, they chose the old Cain Meefing House in Chester
County, Pennsylvania (Figure 30), as a place which reflects their understanding of the
Quaker faith.
86
Chapter VI.
The Pastoral Quaker Branch (Gurneyites)
Of the three Quaker traditions emerging from the mid-nineteenth century, the
Gurneyites have been the most wilHng to experiment with their architecture. During the
150 years of their existence, the Gurneyites rejected the traditional Quaker understanding
of worship and moved to a more Protestant world view. These significant changes in
worship necessitated some architectural manifestations. The architecture of this branch
falls into seven general categories: the Quaker Ideal (1850-1885), the Late Ideal (1870-
1880), the Front-Gabled (1875—1920), the Akron Plan (1895-1925), Neo-Classical
(1900-1930), the Pastoral (1925-1970), and the Modem (1965-2000).'^'*
The Gurneyite Use of the Quaker Ideal Plan (1850-1885)
When the Orthodox Friends divided, the Gurneyite Friends represented the
majority. For the most part, this division was regional. In three of the yearly meetings
(Baltimore, New York, and Indiana), Wilburite sentiment was geographically confined;
the overwhelming majority of these yearly meetings was Gurneyite. In New England, the
Gurneyites also comprised the vast majority of the members, though some Wilburite
sentiment existed in most portions of the yearly meeting. The Gurneyites were in the
minority in only two of the yearly meetings (Ohio and Philadelphia).
'3^ ^^. Xhe author assigned the names of all these styles except for the Akron Plan.
87
There was not a great building campaign following the Wilbur-Gumey division
(especially when compared to the Hicksite-Orthodox division). There are several reasons few new meeting houses were constructed. First, since Wilbur sentiment was
geographically concentrated in many yearly meetings, it was common for whole meetings to emerge unscathed. Second, in many divided localities the Wilburites and Gumeyites were willing to share the old Orthodox meeting house. This was especially true in Ohio, where many moderate Wilburites endeavored to bring the two factions back together for several months after the division took place. Third, the decision by Philadelphia Yearly
Meeting to cease correspondence with all other yearly meetings meant that its Wilburite and Gumeyite factions established a tenuous truce and avoided a division altogether
(except for the withdrawal of the more strict Primitive Friends in 1860).
The new meeting houses constructed by the Gumeyites were at first a continuation of the Quaker Ideal. One of the first new Gumey meeting houses was the
Damascus (Ohio) Meeting House. The Wilburite and Gumeyite elements had decided to share their meeting house after 1854, but in 1856 a storm demolished the building. The
Gumeyite minority and Wilburite majority constmcted separate meeting houses which were identical except for their building materials: the Wilburites built a fi-ame meeting house (Figure 92) while the Gumeyites built a brick one (Figure 91). West Branch, Iowa, was another community where a Gumey minority constmcted a new meeting house. The new Gumeyite meeting house (Figure 78), where Herbert Hoover's family attended, was
88
almost indistinguishable from the Wilburite Hickory Grove Meeting House constructed
nearby (Figure 79).'^^
In several communities where no division occurred, the old meeting house needed
to be replaced as a result of growing attendance or structural problems. These
communities had no need to prove they represented "the" continuation of the Orthodox
branch and presumably could have varied the style of their buildings. None of them chose
to do so. Examples of these meeting houses are New Garden (1858, Figure 93) and
'^^ Fairmount (1860), both in Indiana.
The drastic changes in Gumeyite Quakerism of the 1870s skew people's
perceptions of how the Gumeyites saw themselves in the 1850s. Gumey leaders believed
they were maintaining Orthodox Quakerism against strict schismatics. Throughout the
decade prior to the 1854 division in Ohio, Gumeyites worked through the General
Committee to marginalize the Wilbur groups in New England and New York.
Throughout these years, Gumeyites maintained that John Wilbur had acted disorderly in
his interpretation of Gumey's writings and did not accuse Wilburites of unsound
doctrine. Following the 1 854 divisions, Gumeyites claimed that their supporters in Ohio
had been the guardians of order. They give no sense that they had arrived at any new
'^^ understanding of what it meant to be a Quaker.
Although the Gumeyites claimed to be the champions of order and Orthodoxy,
many of their leaders recognized the need for revitalization. A group of Gumey leaders
Quaker Sesquicentennial, p. 24. '^^ Gregory Hinshaw, pp. 54, 75. .^•'"Hamm, pp. 28-33.
89
has been identified by Thomas Hamm as the "renewal Friends." Advocates of renewal
were found in each Gumeyite yearly meeting. One renewal Friend expressed his concerns
about the state of Gumeyite meetings:
Some of the intelligent young people are losing heart and giving up
attending meetings, because there is no ministry, or very little, and that only at the
fag end of long sittings, and they feel that they must go elsewhere to find food for
'^* their souls.
Since they sought to keep themselves separated fi^om the Primitive movement,
renewal Friends emphasized the importance of the Bible and reduced the emphasis upon
early Friends. Gumey's works, which had been amicably received earlier, fascinated
renewal Friends. During the mid- 1850s, the new doctrinal emphasis was upon the
atonement, a popular topic among British Friends three decades before. Gumey ministers
were also beginning to stress the need for Friends "to come to Jesus and receive the
pardon so fi^eely offered." This invitational ministry was paired with a declining emphasis
'^^ upon Quaker testimonies then considered outmoded.
The Late Ideal Plan (1870-1880)
The renewal movement found architectural expression. One of the recurring
problems in brick meeting house construction was that Friends did not lay the brick with
enough wythes to support the walls, resulting in the collapse of several brick meeting
houses. In 1865, the Hicksites combated this issue in Richmond, Indiana, when they
Ibid., pp. 38-74; The Carolina Quaker Experience, p. 122. '" .-!» Hamm, pp. 38-74.
90 constructed their new meeting house described earlier (Figure 46). The Hicksites included brick ribs which expressed the division between each bay and constructed a centered cross-gable over the new centered entrance. These changes - partially a structural experiment and partially a willingness to alter the Quaker Ideal form - intrigued the Gumeyites.
The new meting house at Spiceland, Indiana, (1874, Figure 94) incorporated some of these innovations. Spiceland is a large one-story brick building with a protruding central cross-gabled vestibule. Tall windows flank a door in the center of the vestibule; a window above the door reaches the same height as the flanking windows. All of the windows have arched heads which are emphasized by a protruding semicircular brick dripcourse. Each bay of the meeting house is framed by slightly decorative brickwork.
An additional ornamental touch is the series of brackets under the soffits. While the exterior of Spiceland represents a break with the simplicity of the Quaker Ideal, the interior was originally plain. A very similar meeting house was constructed nearby in
Dublin (1878), and brick ribs became common in Indiana meeting houses afterwards. The new North Carolina Yearly Meeting House in High Point also followed the Late Ideal
Plan (Figure 95).'''°
A second instance of an elaboration of the Quaker Ideal Plan was the new Kansas
Yearly Meeting House (Figure 96). This meeting house, possibly enlarged later, does not
seem to have had an effect on the development of Quaker architecture although it does
' Gregory Hinshaw, pp. 53, 89.
91
reflect the changes in Gumeyite thought during the 1870s. The Lawrence Tribune
described this building as follows:
It has ... wings on the north and south sides ... the interior is divided
principally into two large auditoriums, one on the first floor for males, and
another on the second floor for the gentler sex... These auditoriums are of the
same size. The wings on either side are constructed so as to contain four stories,
with a room in each story, intended for cloak and dressing rooms... The exterior
of the building has a peculiar, though pleasant appearance. The two ventilating
shafts surmounted with tastefial caps add much to its exterior appearance.''*'
Although the Gumeyites quickly introduced new architectural forms, the Quaker
Ideal style continued in use in more conservative areas. Most of the later instances of the
Quaker Ideal Plan were constructed in North Carolina. There, Providence (1884, Figure
97), South Fork (1888) and Holly Springs (1890) were some of the last uses of the strict
'''^ interpretation of the Quaker Ideal.
The Front-Gabled Plan (1875-1920)
Indiana Yearly Meeting was the center of a new theological movement which
rocked Orthodox Quakerism. In the late 1 860s, travelling ministers began to hold special general meetings. As the meetings became more popular, the traditional Quaker
'"" Quoted in Sheldon G. Jackson, A Short History of Kansas Yearly Meeting of Friends (Wichita KS: Day's Print Shop, 1946), pp. 43-44. ^*^ Carolina Quakers, pp. 121-122; Seth Hinshaw, Friends at Holly Spring (Davidson NC: North Carolina
Friends Historical Society, 1982), p. 76.
92
terminology was replaced with the Methodist term revival meeting. Ministers preached
that hearers could be filled with the Holy Spirit and instantaneously be converted to
holiness. There was also a noticeably increasing emphasis upon ministers as the special
messenger. Leading revivalists were David B. Updegraff, Dougan Clark, John Henry
Douglas, and Mary H. Rogers.'"*^
Although the revivals satisfied many Friends, the momentum led to additional
changes in worship. By 1873, revivals included congregational singing and appointed
prayers. Updegraff began to single out special benches called mourners' benches
(occasionally in the ministers' gallery) for those willing to come forward and ask for
special attention. By 1877, revivalists were asking people to come forward "to receive
new life." Revival ministers criticized Quaker testimonies and traditions as marks of
spiritual deadness and led the movement to rewrite the Discipline in each Gumeyite
yearly meeting. They also worked to limit the power of the Elders, who tended to present
roadblocks to worship innovations.''*''
Throughout the late 1870s, meeting house architecture changed dramatically
among the Gumeyites. A comparison of the new Ohio Yearly Meeting House at
Damascus (1869, Figure 98) and the new Indiana Yearly Meeting House at Richmond
(1878, Figure 99) aptly illustrates how far Gumeyite architecture had developed within a
decade. The Damascus Meeting House could have been built in any of the yearly
meetings in North America, but the latter reflects the later Gumeyite identification with
American Protestants. The Indiana Yearly Meeting House is similar to the Quaker Ideal
"" Hamm, pp. 74-83.
.,iM "^/ZjjV/., pp. 82-85.
93
but incorporates a front gable and Gothic arches. Many symbols from Protestantism were
being accepted without question.'''^
The key characteristic of the Front Gabled Plan is their orientation: they are
uniformly front-gabled buildings with a strong central axis leading to a pulpit. From this
point onward, Gumeyite meeting houses almost always hearken back to the old English
Friends End-Gallery Plan. One of the earliest examples of a front-gabled meeting house
was the Eutaw Street Meeting House in Baltimore (1867, Figure 100). This large two-
story, three-bay building had a projecting central bay and a dominant pediment on the
fa9ade. Doubled entry doors were located in a large recessed arch in the central bay, and
each of the windows was also recessed. Knowledge of the Eutaw Street Meeting House
became widespread as a result of a Peace Conference held there after its completion in
1867. However, further front-gabled meeting houses do not appear among Gumeyites for
almost a decade. Their general characteristics were based upon the details of the Eutaw
Street Meeting House: front-gabled buildings with a strong central axis, often
'"^^ accompanied by arched head windows and a double door entry.
Many Front-Gabled Plan meeting houses were simple, with little exterior
ornamentation. The Bethany Meeting House (Figure 101), erected in 1878 in North
Carolina, was a one-story, three-bay front gabled meeting house with large windows and
a double door. It represents an early instance of the large number of front-gabled meeting
houses with no exterior ornamentation. As time progressed, however, more complex
Gregory Hinshaw, p. 82. '"* 94 forms emerged. The Norristown (Permsylvania) Meeting House of 1890 featured two cross-gables on the sides of the building, forming a cruciform shape (Figure 102). One of the Protestant ecclesiastical features the Quakers had traditionally rejected as nonessential was a steeple. The Gumeyites shed this tradition as well. The first meeting house to be built with a roof ornament was Buena Vista, Indiana (1877, Figure 103) which featured a small cupola near the front gable. Other meeting houses elaborated upon the theme, such as Van Wert in Indiana Yearly Meeting, which added a belfry when they expanded their meeting house in 1878. New Garden, Indiana (Figure 93) is an example of one of several meeting houses which added a belfry during these years. Many local meetings rejected the term steeple because these roof ornaments did not house a bell."*^ The first meeting house built with a full steeple was West Milton in Indiana Yearly Meeting (Figure 104). Buih in 1881, West Milton is an early example of a meeting house with no provision for separate interior seating. A strong central aisle leads directly to the pulpit, which is located on a platform with a choir area. Behind the pulpit is a large recessed Gothic blind arch which now houses a painting of Jesus. West Milton was also one of the first meetings to introduce musical instruments into the worship.''*^ Early Friends developed a great distaste for steeples, which in their day meant a tower-like element. Gumeyites at Vandalia, Michigan, erected a new meeting house in 1879 (Figure 105) which departed fi-om this Quaker tradition. Vandalia was a small fi-ont- gabled meeting house with an entry tower on the comer of the building. The front gable ' Gregory Hinshaw, pp. 75, 93, 107. ' Ibid., p. 97; ne Western Friend, 8* Mo. 1883. 95 consisted of two large pointed windows and a round garret window, but no door. The entry tower had a Second Empire-inspired hipped roof and decorative glazing. The use of entry towers seems to have been limited geographically, as they seem to have been rare in Ohio and along the Atlantic coast until the twentieth century. In Indiana, however, towers were common. There were several alternate placements of entry towers: they were occasionally centered in the front gable (e.g.. South Wabash, erected 1881, Figure 106), placed on the side of the building (e.g., West River, erected 1882, Figure 107), or even paired on the comers (e.g.. Farmland, erected 1889, Figure 108). Some entry towers on twentieth-century Gumey meeting houses were castellated (e.g., Jonesboro, Indiana, Figure 109).'^^ Not all Friends welcomed the news of the revivals. The Hicksites ridiculed them as the logical outgrowth of Orthodoxy and proof that Gumeyites had little interest in the Society of Friends. The Wilburites were appalled as well, but they chose to handle the problem in an unusual manner: many Wilburite ministers travelled through Gumeyite communities and spoke against the revival movement. Wilburites of all stripes supported the travels into Gumey territory of such people as Ann Branson of Ohio Yearly Meeting (Wilburite), Persis Hallock of New York Yearly Meeting (Kingite Primitive), and Daniel Koll of Fallsington General Meeting (Otisite Primitive). As the 1877 revivals surpassed prior innovations, anti-revival Gumeyites, now coming to be called Conservative Friends, separated in Indiana, Western, Canada, Iowa, and Kansas Yearly Meetings. In the latter yearly meeting, Cyrus W. Harvey, a recorded minister at Spring River Meeting, became Gregory Hinshaw, pp. 56, 94, and 126. 96 an effective voice among Conservatives. He held general meetings in many localities as an alternative to the revivals (anti-revival revivals) which were popular among Friends. The Conservative Friends rejected the Gumeyites and joined the Wilburite Friends.'^" Harvey preserved a vignette of a Gumeyite worship service at Kansas Yearly Meeting in his paper. The Western Friend: Upon entering the room the aisle was quite full of people not yet seated. Almost upon the moment of entering the house, Wilson Spray, a minister of Western [Yearly Meeting], stepped up to the platform of the first raised seat and began to urge the people to 'be seated, as the meeting has begun.' Before they had got seated Thomas Kimber of New York came in, and taking his place beside W. Spray at once 'took charge' of the meeting by saying, 'Yes, the meeting has begun and we want the Spirit of prayer to flow from vessel to vessel this morning...' There was no time of silence, and for the hour and a half which the meeting lasted, T. Kimber never took his seat but stood on his feet and dictated the services of the meeting, not even kneeling to make his prayer.'^' Changes in the architecture of Gumeyite meeting houses came quickly. Two important movements which led to architectural change were the rising value placed on a single minister and the discontinuing of separate business meetings, thus challenging the ''** Hamm, pp. 99-102; Jackson, pp. 56-58. A Conservative in North Carolina Yearly Meeting complained of the Gumey speakers thus: "It has got so that preachers have to get up and have their books and read some, and then they try to preach from that. I think that if the Almighty has that near quit helping them they have a very good excuse to quit preaching." [Quoted in The Carolina Quaker Experience, p. 123.] '^' The Western Friend, Tenth Month 1880. 97 two Quaker folkways responsible for the standard interiors of Friends meeting houses. These movements had begun by 1880 and became widespread by 1903. By that time, a new meeting house design had captured the imagination of the revival Gumeyites. The Akron Plan (1895-1925) The Akron Plan was designed by Lewis Miller, an industrialist in Akron, Ohio. When the Methodists sought to construct new facilities in Akron, Miller submitted an innovative proposal. His plan called for an L-shaped building with an entry tower inside the angle. The main meeting room was also L-shaped, with a platform for the speaker in the comer opposite the entry tower. Seats were arranged in a quarter circle in front of the platform. Large screens were built into the plan to be used to subdivide the large L- shaped room by closing off classrooms. This was a particular interest of Miller, who discovered from his experience that children needed to be separated into different age groups for Bible studies. The Akron congregation built their new facilities according to Miller's design, and the Akron Plan became a favorite evangelical Protestant building '^^ style across America. Among Quakers, only the Gumeyites chose to constmct meeting houses according to the Akron Plan. One of the first meeting houses so constmcted was Winchester, Indiana, in 1895 (Figure 110). This building incorporated marble dripcourses around the large windows on the ends of the L-shaped room and featured a small spire at each comer. The entry tower was square with no spire itself, but an octagonal-shaped '^^ Bill O'Connor, "Akron's take-charge aristocrat [Lewis Miller]," in the Akron Beacon Journal Online. 98 decorative turret rose through a buttress near the entry door and had a castellated finial. The classroom portion of the meeting house included a projecting octagon topped by a spire. The builder of this building had constructed another one in New Castle, Indiana, on this same plan, the only difference being Winchester did not have a baptistry. Although this was a radical departure from Quaker tradition, there seems to be no indication of opposition from Friends circles. Even the Hicksites and Wilburites ignored this '^^ significant architectural statement. Akron Plan meeting houses became immediately popular among the revivalist Gumeyites. It represented one of the most common architectural types of the era from 1900 to 1920, being found throughout Gumeyite yearly meetings. Those Gumeyite Friends who sought to carve out a path between Quaker traditions (including the traditional meeting house design) and standard Protestant forms seem to have recognized the value in the newly-discovered Akron Plan as an acceptable solution to their needs. The Oregon Yearly Meeting House (Figure 111) had a two-story main meeting room and a two and a half story educational portion on the rear. Its entry tower was constructed on a 45 degree angle rather than completing the square of the footprint. At Whittier, CaHfomia (Figure 112), the tower was incorporated into the comer of the building, forming an L-shaped interior room which did not necessitate the cross-gabled extension. Other Akron Plan meeting houses included Mt. Airy, North Carolina (Figure 2); Farmland, Indiana (Figure 1 14); and Alliance, Ohio. One of the last Akron Plan meeting houses erected by Gumeyites was at Goldsboro, North Carolina, in the 1 920s. «(S*' Gregory Hinshaw, p. 104. 99 One advantage of the Akron Plan was that it was possible to convert an existing end-gabled building. The White River (Indiana) Meeting House is an example (Figure 113). The meeting knocked out an end wall to add the cross-gabled classroom, then knocked out a comer to construct their entry tower. Later an additional classroom annex complicated the floorplan of the building. West River, Indiana, is an example of a meeting house in which the cross-gabled classroom addition was not a part of the main meeting room. This meeting house has little ornamentation of its entry tower. Fountain City, Indiana, is another example of the classroom space not adding to the size of the main meeting room.'^"* Neo-Classical (1900-1930) The moderate Gumeyite opposition to the modified religious services first showed its strength at Indiana Yearly Meeting in 1880, where they intercepted and ended an attempt by David B. Updegraff to spread his new opinions on water baptism and outward communion. The moderate Friends convinced every yearly meeting except Ohio to refuse to recognize travelling ministers who rejected the traditional Quaker understandings on these two matters. Israel P. Hole, an Ohio moderate, gave a speech (later published) in which he attempted to undermine the revivalists' understanding of worship. Hole said Friends were set aside "to call man back from these outward forms and concentrate his thoughts and attention upon the inward and spiritual life; to call him away from the "'^^ ceremonies, from ... the outward form, to the inward ... and spiritual worship of God. '"/fe/rf, pp. 99-101. '" ^- Hamm, pp. 130-137. 100 The moderate challenge to the "ordinance Friends" led to the Richmond Conference in 1887. This was the first conference of all yearly meetings held since the demise of the General Committee during the 1850s. London and Dublin Yearly Meetings sent representatives in addition to each of the Gumeyite yearly meetings. Four Gumeyites fi-om Philadelphia Yearly Meeting attended by invitation. The conference produced a document known as the Declaration of Faith which outlined the basic understandings of the representatives on major religious issues. Moderates were able to control the text of the declaration, carving out a position between that of the Conservatives and that of the ordinance Friends. The Richmond Conference was a watershed in Gumeyite history. The moderate forces were now in control of the Gumeyite Quaker leadership everywhere outside of Ohio Yearly Meeting, and they began to marginalize the ordinance party. Also of significance is that the Philadelphia Gumeyite minority was appalled by the '^^ Declaration and began to dissipate into the Wilburite mentality there. After the Manchester Conference in 1895, Modemist thinking began to soak through many Friends meetings. Modemists became the chief opponents of revivalists, and they formed a new strain in the Gumey yearly meetings which continues until the present day. With their acceptance of modem thinking, it was a short step to accepting '^^ the latest architectural styles. In 1900, the Gumeyite publication The American Friend sponsored an issue dedicated to meeting house design. Several leading Friends submitted short essays which give a good indication of the variety of Gumey sentiment at the turn of the twentieth 'Ibid, pp. 137-139. ' Ibid., pp. 146-160. 101 century, and three of them encapsulated the ideas of the time. Herbert T. Cash wrote: "Religion is not necessarily connected with ugliness, lack of adornment and unrelieved monotony." Cash advocated the use of symmetrical facades, "harmony of color, softness of tone, and careful arrangement of details" as an aid to "the worship of the true, the pure, and the good." Furthermore, "as a general principle, ... no meeting house should be inferior in comfort, convenience, and general appointment to the best homes in the community." His shape of choice was the Greek cross shape (such as that constructed at Norristown PA, Figure 102). Carolena M. Wood complained There seems to be a tendency ... among Friends in different parts to call those houses which we use for our meetings for worship, 'churches,' conforming thus to the general usage among other denominations... Not only does the meaning of the word . . . cast an invidious reflection upon the dwelling houses of our members, but it imputes a sanctity to that edifice which in no wise belongs to brick and mortar, and often prevents us from feeling free to make use of the building for purposes owned and blessed of the Lord. [Wood recommended that Friends] carefully shun the forms of ecclesiastical tradition as embodied in steeples, tawdry mural decorations, and cheap wood work and stained glass... [and] avoid all that is in any way striking, or unnatural; but above all let us avoid brilliant colored glass in the windows. '^^ ''* a/-' The American Friend, 3/1/1900, pp. 197—203. 102 Amos Sanders disagreed with Wood, postulating that "the windows should be carefully located, tastefully framed and filled with cathedral glass, leaded in handsome patterns, with mild, well-blended colors." Sanders continued "the pulpit, with its furnishings and surroundings, should present nothing out of proportion and harmony. The carpeting, seating, lighting, heating, with all incidental appliances, should conform to the rest of the room." Of the various writers, Sanders had the greatest impact of the writers; throughout the following decade, Gumeyite Friends began to install carpeting and stained glass '^^ windows in their meeting houses. The favored architectural choice for modernist Friends was the popular Neo- classical manner, a subset of Academic Eclecticism. An early example of this style was constructed at High Point, North Carolina, in 1903 (Figure 115). The new meeting house was a large two-story rectangular building with a prominent Greek entry portico. The walls of the building were lined with chamfered stone, and Ionic columns supported the large pediment over the entry door. Small hoods crowned the windows on the main floor, and a round window in the tympanum brought natural light into the building. The meeting house in Seattle, Washington, had a very similar appearance (Figure 1 16). This '^'^ particular building became the prototype for the later Pastoral style. During the following two decades, other Neo-Classical meeting houses followed. The Asheboro Street Meeting House in Greensboro, North Carolina (Figure 117) was constructed in 1909 and used the round garret window across the whole second story of the meeting house. A more important meeting house was constructed in West Richmond, '''Ibid. ,- Carolina Quakers, p. 122. 103 Indiana (Figure 118). This meeting house was a square building incorporating many classical details and a mix of major and minor axes. The front of the two-story building used two Ionic columns to divide the fa9ade into three large bays; the two end bays were marked with a pediment over a two-story arch-headed window. The central bay contained double entry doors with arched head transoms. Inside, the primary axis led people into the meeting room while secondary axes led to the service functions of the building, including classrooms and the library.'^' Later Neo-Classical Friends meeting houses tended to follow the West Richmond pattern. New Castle, Indiana (Figure 1 1 9) pulled the pediment and the columns into the third bay to frame the recessed door and used decorative brickwork to divide the fa9ade into three bays. The interior featured a pulpit area framed by pilasters supporting entablatures; the ceiling was coffered. Winston-Salem, North Carolina (Figure 120) continued the Greek portico motif of the High Point Meeting House and used it to help conceal its hipped roof It also featured dentil molding, decorative brickwork, and two- story arched head windows. The Oskaloosa (Iowa) Meeting House is an example of another building which incorporated many classical details (Figure 121).'^^ The Pastoral Style (1925-1970) During the 1920s, a variant of the Neo-Classical manner emerged. This style is often called Colonial Revival or Greek Revival, although not all of the Pastoral style buildings featured Greek or colonial elements. These buildings consisted of a narrow '*' Gregory Hinshaw, p. 98. '*^ ^ft Ibid., p. 74; Carolina Quakers, p. 127. 104 rectangular building with a front gable entry and a rear classroom ell. Many of these buildings featured Greek porticoes, but not all. Each of them is characterized by a strong axis leading to the pulpit; the interiors tend to be carpeted and have comfortable benches with cushions. By this time the Gumeyite meetings had made the decision to hire pastors for their services, and this particular style represented one of the popular forms used by meetings with pastors. One of the first meeting houses to reflect these features was Archdale, North Carolina (Figure 122). This building was constructed in 1925 and featured a Greek portico over a three-bay front gable. It did not have a steeple, an unpopular element with the Modernist Quakers. The windows on the main portion of the building are multiple- paned, which gave a colonial feel. The Pastoral style was immediately popular. North Carolina Friends erected three similar meeting houses within a few years: Rocky River (1926), Springfield (1927), and Providence (1930), and it dominated the new architecture of pastoral meetings until 1970.'" There were many variants of the Pastoral style. As stated before, not all Friends were comfortable with the inclusion of the Greek portico. During the 1930s, Pine Hill (Figure 124) and Hunting Creek Meeting Houses in North Carolina were erected without the portico but included a spire above the front gable. The new Cane Creek (North Carolina) Meeting House erected in 1942 (Figure 123) had neither the spire nor the portico, but the meeting later added both elements. A later option which became common was the small entry vestibule (an early example was Bethel, North Carolina, Figure 125). '*^ Carolina Quakers, pp. 119-132. During the latter half of the twentieth century, many Pastoral meetings have reduced their towers/steeples or removed them entirely. 105 Meetings with a more modem view of religion tended to use the portico without a steeple; examples include Greensboro, Springfield, High Point, and Asheboro (Figure ^^^ 126), all in North Carolina. During the 1 950s, a variant of the Pastoral style emerged which became preferred by the growing evangelical faction of pastoral Friends. Most of these buildings were built by the group of meetings which seceded from the main body of pastoral Friends to form the Evangelical Friends. The significant architectural innovation of the evangelical manner is that the entry has been moved to the side of the building, near but not inside the front gable. Many of these meeting houses have decorated the front gable, often with a simple cross. One of the earliest examples of this Evangelical Pastoral Plan was at Rowland, Ohio (1956, Figure 127). This particular meeting house has a protruding central bay on the front gable with a large cross. A very similar meeting house was Salem Southeast, erected in Salem, Ohio, in 1959 (Figure 128). Salem First Friends, also in Salem, Ohio, incorporated fUrther ornamentation of the front gable (Figure 129). Glenwood, North Carolina, one of the more evangelical meetings which chose to stay with the main body of Pastoral Friends, used the evangelical variant of the Pastoral style in 1969. The Canton (Ohio) Meeting House added a new meeting room in 1982 which included a large round window in the ornamental cross to light the stage from the outside (Figure 136). One of the common features of these meeting houses is their steeple, although steeples are not universal. ^^ Ibid, pp. 118, 136, 141, 145. '*' Quaker Sesquicentennial, p. 76. Using the cross as an architectural ornament had been introduced among Friends in the 1940s. 106 The Modern Style (1970-2000) California Friends had always been more likely to investigate new architectural trends, and the California pastoral Friends were no exception. Much of the early modem architecture of all three Quaker branches originated in California. The Berkeley Meeting House (Figure 131) was a large one-story building with a steeply-pitched roof and unusual comer entry towers. A large window composed of a collection of pointed windows dominated the front gable end of the building. Other early twentieth-century California meeting houses reflected an Irving Gill manner, with smooth lines and curves replacing the sharp lines found in most religious architecture. Among them are Ramona Park (Figure 132) and Pueblo (Figure 133). Modem architecture became widespread among pastoral Friends during the late 1960s. These modem meeting houses were designed to help evangelicals to attract new members by reflecting changes in society. Evangelicals they wanted to provide a less confrontational and more secular location for worship because they discovered that many people had rejected traditional religion. These Modem meeting houses often have a cenfral worship room which is quite distinctive: several aisles radiate from the pulpit through the rings of benches. In the later meeting houses, the pulpit has been removed altogether and replaced with a stage. Wings branch off the main meeting room for offices and classrooms. There is a great variety of shapes and sizes of these modem meeting houses, but most of the are long one-story buildings, often with a plaza-like collection of smaller units. Examples include Alliance, Ohio (Figure 130) and South Fork, North Carolina (Figure 1 34). Winona, Ohio, is an example of a compact Modem plan (Figure 107 135). Modem exteriors give little indication that the building is intended to serve as a site '^^ for worship. Modem meeting houses also tend to serve as "shopping malls" where people can find many different services. The members are encouraged to develop their personal ministries, such as counseling services, and then reserve some rooms for these purposes. In addition, evangelicals discovered that "sports ministries" are easy ways to increase attendance at their worship services. Building gymnasiums has become so common and considered so critical to their growth that many of the most recent pastoral meeting houses began with the gymnasium, and ended with the worship room (Jackson and Canton, Ohio, have followed this pattern). Interestingly enough, the architecture of pastoral Friends has reached a point similar to that of the earliest Friends. Their architecture has been separated from traditional Protestant architecture and seems more secular. Both groups sought a new form of worship space which appealed to people not active in another religious group. The radical changes in worship and practice introduced by the pastoral Friends indicate that the similarities are quite coincidental, however. Pastoral Friends at the dawn of the twenty-first century tend to downplay any distinctiveness associated with Quakerism, and seem to be in danger of disappearing into the general evangelical Protestant movement in America. ' Williams, pp. 184-186. 108 Conclusion. Research for this thesis identified sixteen different architectural modes used in Friends meeting houses. These various modes reflect the tension between nonconformity (separation from the wider culture) and the modemizers in each generation. During the early eighteenth century, the varying local and imported building traditions began to converge, culminating in the development of the Quaker Ideal Plan. At that time, leading Friends sought to erect stronger barriers between themselves and non-Friends by appealling to a stronger uniformity. Thus the new six-bay Quaker Ideal Plan became associated with the uniformity crusade which dominated Friends thought and became the architectural style identified with North American Quakers. Uniformity collapsed following the Civil War, as Friends of all branches began to seek answers to the declining state of their meetings. The Gumeyites and Hicksites chose to address their decline by investigating intellectual movements of the wider culture, and they each experimented with the traditional Quaker Ideal Plan (by using the Late Ideal / Center Gabled and the Front Gabled Plans). Wilburites, however, chose to maintain their separation from the wider culture; as a result, they continued to use the Quaker Ideal Plan and its Chesterfield variant. After the dawn of the twentieth century, modem thought patterns began to seep into Friends meetings across the continent. The Hicksites gradually evolved into Liberal Friends, re-establishing some links to the past and rejecting others. Their use of the Modified Ideal Plan meeting houses was derived from their desire to choose the best of the past and mix it with the best of the present. As modem thought divided the Gumeyites into the modernist (FUM) and Evangelical Friends, two different styles 109 appeared. Modernist Friends began to erect Neo-Classical meeting houses in the first decade of the twentieth century, followed by the Pastoral meeting houses and then modem. Evangelical Friends adopted the Akron Plan from the Methodists and followed this plan with a variant of the Pastoral manner before beginning to use modem styles. The Wilburites were unable to maintain their isolation from modem culture, and their later meeting houses provide evidence that they were willing to incorporate the better trends in modem society as long as they could maintain their connection to Quaker traditions. Interestingly enough, current meeting house design of the various branches of Quakerism seems to be more uniform than at any point during the twentieth century. Throughout the 1900s, the exterior of a new Friends meeting house gave a visitor enough information to identify the branch of Friends sponsoring the project. In the twenty-first century, however, both liberal and evangelical Friends are seeking to separate themselves fi-om religious traditions. As a result, the newest meeting houses generally give little indication of their purpose. Indeed, the best way to identify the branch sponsoring a new meeting house today would be to note ancillary buildings; the more evangelical Friends tend to include sports and fitness facilities and personal ministry rooms as freestanding buildings or wings of the main block, while the more liberal Friends give little attention to these endeavors. The history of the evolution of Friends meeting house design is the history of the struggle of Quakers to redefine themselves as a group. Each new innovative architectural design has encapsulated the intellectual thought pattems which made the particular mode possible, and the next generation of Friends has sought to alter or improve the modes of prior decades. Throughout the past century, Quakers of all branches have rejected (in 110 some degree) the identifiably Quaker architecture and have incorporated elements also in use by other denominations. This movement developed concurrently with the paradigm that the local Quaker congregation is a subset of larger religious movement (liberal, modernist, or evangelical). As a result, the recent history of Quaker architecture has more relevance to American religious architecture in general than the older Quaker styles, which were conscious rejections of the prevailing architectural modes. Until the thinking behind the construction of Friends meeting houses begins to reflect intrinsically Quaker values, one can state that Quaker architecture has come to an end. Ill Appendix. Illustrations Cited in Text. Note: Photo captions follow these guidelines: 1) If the name of the building is the same as the name of its city, the state name is used before the phrase Meeting House. For example. Salem (Massachusetts) Meeting House is located in Salem. Massachusetts. 2) If the name of the building does not reflect its particular location, the location and state follow the phrase Meeting House. For example. Stillwater Meeting House, near Bamesville (Ohio), is not located in the town of Stillwater. Ohio. 12 . Figure 1 Stillwater Meeting House, near Bamesville (Ohio), an example of the two-story Quaker architecture of the nineteenth century. Author's photo. #, ^^'Mf'f '^ ^ Ik \ \ J- * --kiMfe4^^-" Figure 2. Mount Airy (North Carolina) Meeting House, an example of the Akron Plan which was fa- vored by revival ministers of the early twentieth century. Sketch in Quaker Collection. Guilford College. 113 Figure 3. Old Ship Meeting House, Hingham (Massachusetts), an example of Puritan archi- tecture of the seventeenth century. Williams, p. 8. 114 :^^'^-^j^...r^:f^..f^. - — — 1 iU^iiw ScnOBi fVZf Later Addition Core of I 673 : pjCk^/LO^r Figure 5. Bristol Meeting House (England), the prototype for the Bristol Plan in America. The meeting house was later doubled, as the plan shows. Adapted from Butler, p. 5 1 7. i^-p-^'-i Figure 6. Adderbury Meeting House (England), an example of the side-galler> plan found in many seventeenth century English Friends meeting houses. Adapted from Butler, p. 492. n net (ri- ifioA. dax^, j| Figure 7. Colthouse Meeting House. Lancashire (England), an example of an end-gallery meeting house with a vestibule near the end opposite the ministers" stand. Adapted from Butler, p. 300. 17 . PLAM K tLeVA^-riOK4 AS SUVLT l67Z Figure 8. Faringdon Meeting House, Berivshire (England), an example of an end-galler> meeting house with a door centered on the side wall. Adapted from Butler, p. 11 Figure 9. ^is*- Stourbridge Meeting House, Worcestershire (England), an example of an end-galler\ meeting house with the entry door on the gable end opposite the end gallerv. Adapted from Butler. p.701. . Figure 10. Third Haven Meeting House, near Easton (Maryland). This is the oldest existing Friends meeting house in America, although it has been enlarged and altered many times. Carroll, plate on an unnum- bered page between pp. 148 and 149. -" i " 'ymiyj ^yit. "<- '? yspBiMitrt'^. -^^-^^AaiJ. *.*l ^3P| mmm h Figure 1 1 -A* Burlington (New Jersey) Meeting House, illustration and plan. This famous hexagonal meeting house received a rear addition which is illustrated in the plan. Adapted from Tvaiyanas. pp. 45-46. 119 Figure 12. Salem (Massachusetts) Meeting House, erected 1 688 by Thomas Maule. The Essex Antiquarian, Tenth Month 1909, vol. 13, no. 4. pp. 145-146. *i»' 120 1 Figure 13. The Great Meeting House in Newport (Rhode Island). This is an early ex- ample of the Bristol Plan in America and is similar to the Great Meeting House in Philadelphia. As originally constructed (left), Mallar\, p. 46; as it looks following restoration (below), author's photo. i 1 I i "V !S a -4^ i. 121 Figure 14. Wilmington (Delaware) Meeting House, as it looked in 1817. Adapted from Bartlett, p. 30. -H Figure 15. Charleston (South Carolina) Meeting House, a later Bristol Plan meeting house with a small lantern. From The American Friend. 3/1/1900, p. 202. 122 Figure 16. Bank Meeting House, Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), a modified Bristol Plan meeting house, replacing the lantern with a gambrel roof on each side. Adapted from Watson's Annals ( 1 877). p. 1:361. Figure 17. Pine Street Meeting House. Philadelphia (Pennsylva- nia). This pyramidal- roofed modified Bristol Plan meeting house was the home meeting of the influ- ential Evans family. Looney. p. 43. ^SSm^ Figure 18. Sadsbury Meeting House, Lancaster Co. (Penns> Ivania). an example of a pyramidal-roofed version of the Bristol Plan. Notice the corner chimneys. Author's photo. Figure 19. Keithian Meeting House, Philadelphia (Penns\ Ivania). This is a rare American example of the English end-gallery plan meeting house. Faris. facing p. 85. 124 . ^^n^A. ^. isf^z 'ri^.mm ^ vr.:?- tf: NJ'^j •;-«*>'/^-^Jt-^'^'^? ii^^i il^: Figure 20. Little Egg Harbor Meeting House, near Tuctcerton (New Jersey), an example ota gainbrel roofed side gallery plan. Tvaryanas, p. 1 72. Figure 21 ^^ Flushing (New York) Meeting House. The chimney delienates the core from the larger 1717 addition. The American Friend, 9/29/1949. p. 3 1 8. 125 Figure 22. Cecil Meeting House. Cecil County (Maryland), an example of a gable-roofed side gallerv plan. Adapted from an unnumbered page in Carroll between 148 and 149. Figure 23. Merion (Pennsylvania) Meeting House. This controversial T-shaped meetinghouse was erected by early Welsh settlers. Doebley. p. 19. 126 Figure 24. Radnor (Pennsylvania) Meeting House added a much smaller room (on the right side of the photo) for the women's business meetings ca. 1 722. Author's photo. Figure 25. the Haddonfield (New Jersey) Meeting House. An example of a Simple Doubled Plan, in which doubling of the interior is not reflected on the exterior. Tvar\anas. p. 59. 127 Figure 26. The Greater Meeting House, Philadelphia (Penns> Ivania). erected in 1 755, is the most famous ex- ample of the Simple Doubled Plan. Tvaryanas. p. 54. Figure 27. Springfield (Pennsylvania) Meeting House. An earl> example of a Proto-ldeal Plan. Campbell Col lection, vol. 17, p. 201. Historical Society of Pennsylvania. 128 Figure 28. Hardwick Meeting House, near Allamuchy (New Jersey), erected 1763; an example of the Proto- Ideal Plan in New Jersey. Tvaryanas. p. 68. Figure 29. South River Meeting House. L\nchburg (Virginia), one of the last built examples of the five-bay Proto-Ideal Plan. The roof and gable ends were rebuilt in 1904. Chambers, p. 27. 129 Figure 28. Hardwick Meeting House, near Allamucliy (New Jersey), erected 1763; an example of the Proto- Ideal Plan in New Jersey. Tvaryanas. p. 68. Figure 2M. South River Meeting House. Lynchburg (Virginia), one ot^the last built examples of the Hve-bay Proto-Ideal Plan. The roof and gable ends were rebuilt in 1 904. Chambers, p. 27. 129 . Figure }0. Cain Meeting House, near Thorndale (Pennsylvania). The core (the left six bays) was erected c. 1 743 and is the oldest known Quaker Ideal Plan. The eastern room (the right six bays) was added in 1 80 1 Author's photo. Figure 31. Exeter Meeting House, Douglassville (Pennsylvania). This 1 758 meeting house is another ver> early use of the Quaker Ideal Plan. Author's photo. 130 Figure 32. Chestnut Street Meeting House, at lourtli and Chestnut Streets, Philadelphia (next to Carpenters" Hall). The meeting house (left) ma\ be an example ofthe Quaker Ideal st> le. l-riends Select School is the building on the right. Broniier, p. 213. I igurc .vv Horse Siicdsat Horsham Meeting House, near llalboro (l*enns\ Kania), illustraling the l>pical roof protHe found across Pennsylvania and Ohio, lew sheds survive to the present. Author's photo. 131 Location of former horse sheds r -\ I I I I North 1 iguic >(i. Noristown (Pennsylvania) Meeting House. 1 his two-story Quaker Ideal Plan has the standard nine- teenth century porticoes. Author's photo. Figure 37. in England, Sandwich (Massachusetts) Meeting House, erected 1 822. The vestibule is common New although this vestibule is one of the largest. Gene Cordell photo, in possession of author. 133 . Figure 38. North Pembroke (Massachusetts) Meeting House. This 1 706 building ilkistrates an entry vestibule with separate doors for the men and women. Sinnott, p. 201 Figure 39. Twelfth Street Meeting House, Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), now located at the George School. This building was erected with the materials from the Greater Meeting House. Note the small entry vesti- bules for the men and women. Philadelphia Record, 1 0/27/19 1 2. 134 Figure 40. Winona (Oiiio) Meeting House, siiowing the full-length front porch. Notice also the horse sheds on the left (west) side of the illustration. Gilbert Cope photograph (1888), Ohio Yearly Meeting ar- chives. 3fl Figure 42. Orchard Park (New York) Meeting House, illustrating two enclosed rooms under the front porch. Author's photo. 136 Figure 43. Architect's sketch of the Arch Street Meeting House, Philadelphia (Pennsylvania). This large meeting house was erected in 1804 to house Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. Tvaryanas, p. 124. Figure 44. Arch Street Meeting House, Philadelphia (Pennsylvania). Author's photo. 137 Figure 45. North Carolina Yearly Meeting House, New Garden (North Carolina). This 1 79 1 meeting house was demolished in 1 873. Friends Historical Collection, Guilford College. Figure 46. Indiana Yearly Meeting House. Richmond (Indiana). This 1822 meeting house was used until 1878 and demolished in 1922. Gregory Hinshaw, p. 5. 138 Figure 47. Ohio Yearly Meeting House, Mount Pleasant (Ohio), one of the largest brick buildings in the state of Ohio when erected, 1816. Author's photo. Figure 48. Ohio Yearly Meeting House, Mount Pleasant (Ohio), interior. View from gallery, facing southeast towards the youth galieiy. Ohio Historical Society postcard. 139 Figure 49. West Meeting House, near Sebring (Ohio). This is one of the few remaining examples of the Quaker Ideal Plan constructed by Ohio Hicksites. Author's photo. Figure 50. Cherry Street Meeting House, Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), the Hicksite yearly meeting house ( 1 827). Bronner, p. 215. 140 Figure 51. Longwood Meeting House, Chester County (Pennsylvania), before restoration. 1 his is one of the few meeting houses erected by the Progressive Friends and was a forerunner of later front-gabled meeting houses. Gentry, p. 114. Figure 52. Race Street Meeting House, Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), showing the cruciform shape. Author's photo. 141 Figure 53. Race Street Meeting House, Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), erected in 1 856 to house the Hicksite Phila- delphia Yearly Meeting. Browin, p. 2. Figure 54. St. George^s Methodist Church House. Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), a possible prototype for the Race Street Meeting House. Williams, p. 86. 142 Figure 55. Indiana Yearly Meeting House, Whitewater (Indiana). This Hicksite meeting house (1865) was ap- parently the prototype for the Center-Gabled Plan of the 1 870s. Author's photo. Figure 56. West Chester (Pennsylvania) Meeting House, one of the earlier Center-Gabled Plan meeting houses constructed in the Delaware Valley. Author's photo. 143 Figure 57. Fair Hill Meeting House, Philadelphia (Pennsylvania). This meeting house incorporates a front ex- tension and small cross-gables on all four sides and is now used by another denomination. Author's photo. Figure 58. Reading (Pennsylvania) Meeting House, one of the earliest Front-Gabled Plan meeting houses erected by Hicksite Friends. Author's photo. 144 Figure 59. West Grove (Pennsylvania) Meeting House, a Front-Gabled Plan erected by Hicksites in 1901 on Prospect Avenue. Note the full porte-cochere. Author's photo. Figure 60. Yardley (Pennsylvania) Meeting House, Bucks County. Although later owners have altered the fa- cade, they retained the pointed windows. Author's photo. 145 Figure 61. Short Creek Meeting House, near Emerson (Ohio), an early Hicksite use of the Simple Doubled Plan. Author's photo. Figure 62. Plainfield Meeting House, east of Bamesville (Ohio), an example of a reduced Hicksite meeting house. Ohio Yearly Meeting archives. 146 Figure 63. Chestnut Hill Meeting House, Philadelphia (Pennsylvania). Note the entry portico, which opens into a cross-gabled rear ell extension. Bonner, p. 83. Figure 64. Harrisburg (Pennsylvania) Meeting House, an example of the Modified Ideal Plan. Bonner, p. 147 Figure 65. Kennett Square (Pennsylvania) Meeting House, an example of the Modified Ideal. Author's photo. Figure 66. Raleigh (North Carolina) Meeting House, an example of a purchased residence. Bonner, p. 54. 148 Figure 67. North Meadow Meeting House. Indianapolis (Indiana), an example of a large residence purchased by Liberal Friends. Author's photo. Figure 68. Atlanta (Georgia) Meeting House, another example of a purchased residence. Bonner, p. 56. 149 Figure 69. Orange Grove Meeting House, Pasadena (California), one of the first twentieth-century meeting houses built by Liberal Friends according to non-traditional prototypes. Perkins Collection, Histori- cal Society of Pennsylvania. Figure 70. Phoenix (Arizona) Meeting House. This ramada-type building is a large open room without formal walls; screens can be put up to block the wind. The American Friend, 8/23/1956, p. 274. 150 Southampton (Pennsylvania) Meeting House. This 1969 building illustrates the two significant ele- ments of Modem meetings houses by Liberal Friends: a focus on natural light and an expressive roof Author's photo. 151 3 in .2? IS CJ - o ^ o — O o 152 " ^\ w Figure 73. Richland Meeting House, east of Quaker City (Ohio). This c. 1 830 meeting house was constructed by Orthodox Friends after being deprived of the use of the nearby 1824 meeting house. Ohio Yearly Meeting archives. Figure 74. Nottingham and Little Britain Meeting House, Lancaster County (Pennsylvania). This c. 1 830 meet- ing house reflects the early use of the Quaker Ideal Plan by the Orthodox. Author's photo. 153 Figure 75. Chesterfield (New Jersey) Meeting House, an example of Orthodox use of the Simple Doubled Plan following the 1827 schism. Tvaryanas, p. 115. Figure 76. nearby Chesterfield (Ohio) Meeting House. Erected in 1 838 following the more square shape of the Pennsville Meeting House. Chesterfield served as a significant Conservative prototype. Ohio Yearly Meeting archives. 154 Figure 77. West Branch (Iowa) Meeting House (Conservative), following the Chesterfield Plan. Ohio Yearly Meeting archives. Figure 78. West Branch (Iowa) Meeting House (Gumeyite), following the Quaker Ideal Plan. Author's photo. 155 Figure 79. Hickory Grove (Iowa) Meeting House (Wilburite), an example of the use of the Quaker Ideal by Iowa Wilburites. Palimpsest, 7/1962, cover illustration. 156 Figure 80. some innovative elements, as seen in Salem (Ohio) Meeting House (Wilburite). Salem incorporated its plan. Ohio Yearly Meeting archives. 157 Figure 81. West Grove Meeting House, near Snow Camp (North Carolina), an example of the four-bay variant of the Chesterfield Plan. Author's photo. t^""*- .-» Figure 82. West Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) Meeting House, a typical Philadelphia Orthodox meeting house of the 1870s with its entry portico, decorative chimneys, and single-room interior. Author's photo. 158 Figure 83. West Grove (Pennsylvania) Meeting House (Orthodox), erected 1903. This unusual design with its hipped roof, cross-gabled fellowship hall (left) and projecting central bay and projecting hood repre- sented a break with the traditional Wilburism of the meeting. Author's photo. Figure 84. the Coatesville (Pennsylvania) Meeting House, erected c. 1 9 1 0. This Orthodox meeting house copies West Philadelphia Meeting House, trading the decorative chimneys for a porte-cochere. Author's photo. 159 Figure 85. Stavanger (Iowa) Meeting House, an example of a five-bay Simple Plan with a Chesterfield-like profile. Author's collection. Figure 86. Jacksonville (New York) Meeting House (Primitive), erected c. 1903, another five-bay Simple Plan. Frank Wood collection. 160 Figure 87. Middleton Meeting House, near Columbiana (Ohio), an early example of a Tripled Plan. Becky Hawkins photo. Figure 88. Ridge Meeting House, south of Barnesville (Ohio). The two women's rooms share a common front separately. Becky porch. This is perhaps the only meeting in which the men and women continue to sit Hawkins photo. 161 Kitchen W 1 Figure 90. Middleton Meeting House, near Columbiana (Ohio), erected 1 959. This meeting house expressed the prevailing thought of Quakerism during the 1 950s, but is now one of the more conservative meetings. Author's photo. 163 Figure 91. Damascus (Ohio) Meeting House (Gumeyite), a Quaicer Ideal Plan erected in 1856. Sesquicenten- nial, p. 24. Figure 92. Wilburite Friends. Author's Upper Springfield Meeting House, in Damascus (Ohio), erected 1 856 by tlie photo. 164 Figure 93. New Garden Meeting House, near Fountain City (Indiana). This early Gurneyite Quaker Ideal Plan has been altered somewhat, including the later addition of the belfry. Author's photo. Figure 94. house by Indiana Spiceland (Indiana) Meeting House, erected in 1 874 as a Late Ideal Plan meeting Gumeyites. Spiceland was an early meeting to hold joint session business meetings. Author's photo. 165 4 :'^^ tel - Figure 95. North Carolina Yearly Meeting House at High Point (North Carolina), watercolor by John Collins in Friends Historical Collection, Guilford College. P E- Figure 96. Kansas Yearly Meeting House, Lawrence (Kansas). The American Friend, 10/6/ 1955. p. 319. 166 Figure 97. Providence Meeting House, Randolph Co. (North Carolina), one of the last Quaker Ideal Plan meet- ing houses constructed by Gumeyite Friends. A small spire was added later. Carolina Quakers, p. 121. 167 Figure 98 The Ohio Yearly Meeting House. Damascus (Ohio), built 1866 and demolished in 1973. This large building represents a slight modification of the Quaker Ideal Plan. Sesquicentennial, p. 23. Figure 99. Indiana Yearly Meeting House, Richmond (Indiana). Erected in 1878, this building represented a significant break with earlier Quaker architecture. Gregory Hinshaw, p. 82. 168 Figure 100. Eutaw Street Meeting House, Baltimore (Maryland), one of the early Gumeyite front-gabled meeting houses. Jacobsen, p. 92. 169 Figure 101. Bethany (North Carolina) Meeting House, constructed in 1878. Bethany is a t>'pical Front-Gabled Plan meeting house. Carolina Quakers, p. 113. Figure 102. Norristown (Pennsylvania) Meeting House, an unusual plan for the Delaware Valley which has been slightly altered after its sale to another denomination. Author's photo. 170 Figure 103. Buena Vista (Indiana) Meeting House, erected 1 877. This was one of the earliest meeting houses built with a pinnacle-like element. Gregory Hinshaw, p. 107. Figure 104. Friends meet- . apparently the first West Milton (Ohio) Meeting House, erected 1 88 1 This was ing house built with a full steeple. Author's photo. 171 Figure 105. Vandalia (Michigan) Meeting House, erected 1 879. This building was one of the first Front- Gabled meeting houses with an entry tower. Gregory Hinshaw, p. 126. Figure 106. South Wabash (Indiana) Meeting House, a Front-Gabled meeting house with a 1 ). Hinshaw. 94. centered entry tower (erected 88 1 Gregory p. 172 Figure 107. West River Meeting House, near Economy (Indiana), erected 1 882. This meeting house has an entry tower on the side of the building. Author's photo. Figure 108. front-gabled Farmland (Indiana) Meeting House, erected 1 889 and burned 1903. This building featured entry towers at each of the comers. Gregory Hinshaw, p. 56. 173 Figure 109. Jonesboro (Indiana) Meeting House. This 1915 building was one of several which included a castel- lated tower. Gregory Hinshaw, p. 63. 174 Figure 1 10. Winchester (Indiana) Meeting House. This 1 897 building was an early and elaborate example of the Akron Plan. Gregory Hinshaw, p. 104. 175 Figure 111. Oregon Yearly Meeting House, an early two-story Akron Plan meeting house. Fred E. Smith Collection, Quaker Archives, Earlham College. Figure 112. Whittier (California) Meeting House. This Akron Plan meeting house has the tower incorporated into the rectangular footprint. Fred E. Smith collection, Quaker Archives. Earlham College. 176 Figure 113. White River Meeting House, east of Winchester (Indiana). Originally built in 1883, the meeting converted it to an Akron Plan in 1920. Author's photo. Figure 1 14. Plan Farmland (Indiana) Meeting House, erected in 1903, is one of the most pristine of the Akron meeting houses today. Author's photo. 177 Figure 115. High Point (North Carolina) Meeting House ( 1 903), one of the earliest Neo-Classical meeting houses. Friends Historical Collection, Guilford College. 4« ' '-i^^S .-O^A./ Figure 1 16. Seattle (Washington) Meeting House, c. 1910, aNeo-Classical building. Gregory Hinshaw. p. 135. 178 Figure 1 17. Asheboro Street Meeting House, Greensboro (North Carolina), a Neo-Classical forerunner of the Pastoral Plan. Author's photo. Figure 1 18. West Richmond (Indiana) Meeting House, a Neo-Classical building. Author's photo. 179 Figure 1 19. New Castle (Indiana) Meeting House, a 1 9 1 7 Neo-Classical meeting house. Gregory Hinshaw, p. 74. Figure 12U. Guilford Winston-Salem (North Carolina) Meeting House, built in 1 928. Friends Historical Collection, College. 180 Figure 121. Oskaloosa (Iowa) Meeting House, an early twentieth-century Neo-Classical building. Fred E. Smith collection, Earlham College. Figure 122. Archdale (North Carolina) Meeting House, one of the early Pastoral style buildings ( 1 925). Friends Historical Collection, Guilford College. 181 Figure 123. Cane Creek Meeting House, near Snow Camp (North Carolina). The new 1 942 meeting house (top) eschewed exterior ornamentation, but later a portico and spire were added. Friends Historical Collec- tion, Guilford College (top), author's photo (bottom). Figure 124. Pine Hill Meeting House, Surry Co. (North Carolina), built in 1939 with a spire. Carolina Quakers, p. 141. Figure 125. Bethel Meeting House. Randolph Co. (North Carolina), had a small vestibule but no spire. Carolina Quakers, p. 136. Figure 126. Asheboro (North Carolina) Meeting House. Typical of many 1 950s meeting houses, Asheboro had no spire but incorporated a portico and vestibule. Friends Historical Collection, Guilford College. ,«ii^' 184 w^ Figure 127. Howland Meeting House, Warren (Ohio), was one of the earliest examples of the evangelical Pastoral style, with the entry doors removed from the front gable end. Sesquicentennial, p. 76. Figure 128. Howland. Sesquicenten- Salem Southeast Meeting House, Salem (Ohio), is almost a mirrored twin of nial p. 76. 185 Figure 129. Salem First Friends Meeting House, Salem (Ohio), was a transitional building between the Evangeli- cal Pastoral Style and Modernism. Walker, p. 8. Figure 130. Alliance (Ohio) Meeting House was an early Modernist experiment (1965). A Heritage to Sa\'e, p. 65. 186 ^ks Figure 131. Berkeley (California) Meeting House, an innovative design from the twentieth century. Fred E. Smith Collection, Earlham College. Figure 132. Ramona Park (California) Meeting House, an Irving Gill-like meeting house. Fred E. Smith collec- tion, Earlham College. 187 y-^ \ ' ^ 1 mi r'l } r ;» k ^H ^ Figure 133. Pueblo (California) Meeting House, another Irving Gill-inspired plan. The American Friend, 9/2/ 1948. Figure 134. le building. Author's South Fork Meeting House, near Snow Camp (North Carolina), a 1 968 Modem st> photo. 188 Figure 135. Winona (Ohio) Meeting House, a 1969 Modem building. Winona Centennial, p. [2r ligure 136. Canton (Ohio) Meeting House. This Modern building is composed of several smaller units and has an adjoining gymnasium. Author's photo. 189 Bibliography Works on Quaker Architecture. Alexander, William. Observations on the Construction and Fitting Up of Meeting-Houses, etc. for Public Worship. York, England: Wm Alexander, 1820. Bronner, Edwin B. "Quaker Landmarks in Early Philadelphia," in Historic Philadelphia: From the Founding until the Early Nineteenth Century. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1953. Butler. David M. The Quaker Meeting Houses ofBritain. London: Friends Historical Society, 1999. Garfmkel, Susan L. "Genres ofWorldliness: Meanings of the Meeting House for Philadelphia Friends, 1 755— 1 830." Dissertation for the American Civilization program. University of Pennsylvania, 1997. Lidbetter, Hubert. The Friends Meeting House. York, England: Wm. Sessions Ltd., 196L Lippincott. H. Mather. Quaker Meeting Houses and a Little Humor Jenkintown, PA: Old York Road Publishing Co., 1952. Matlack, T. Chalkley. Brief Historical Sketches Concerning Friends' Meetings. Moorestown NJ: 1938. Tvaryanas, Damon. "The New Jersey Quaker Meeting House: A Typology and Inventory," master's thesis, Univ. of Pennsylvania HP program, 1993. Works on the English Context of Quakerism, Colvin, Howard. "Gothic Survival and Gothick Revival" in English Architectural History 'He-^ Ha- ven CT: Yale University Press, 1999. Davies, Horton. Worship and Theology in England From Andrewes to Baxter and Fox, 1603— 1690. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975. Hill, Christopher. The Century of Revolution 1605—1714. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1980. Hill, Christopher. The World Turned Upside Down. Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1975. Mow], Timothy and Brian Eamshaw. Architecture Without Kings: The Rise of Puritan Classicism Under Cromwell. Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 1995. Nellist, John B. British Architecture and Its Background. London: Macmillan & Co., 1967. Service, Alastair. The Buildings ofBritain: Tudor andJacobean. London, England: Barrie & Jenkins, 1982. Summerson, John. Architecture in Britain, 1530-1 830. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1983. Walker, Williston. A History of the Christian Church. NYC: Charles Scribner"s Sons, 1945. 190 Works on Quaker History and Thought The American Friend 1900, 1949— 1950. Barbour, Hugh, etal. Quaker Crosscurrents: Three Hundred Years ofFriends in the New York Yearly Meetings. Syracuse NY: Syracuse University Press, 1995. Barbour, Hugh. The Quakers in Puritan England. New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 1964. Barclay, Robert. An Apology for the True Christian Divinity. Ury Scotland, 1675. Bates, Elisha. Doctrines ofFriends. Mount Pleasant: Ohio Yearly Meeting, 1824. Bauman, Richard. Let Your Words Be Few: Symbolism ofSpeaking and Silence Among Seventeenth- Century Quakers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Brady, John H. A Short History of Conservative Friends. Richmond IN: 1992. Braithvvaite, William C. The Beginnings of Quakeri.sm. Macmillan & Co., 1912. Braithwaite, William C. The Second Period of Quakerism. Macmillan & Co., 1919. Carroll, Kenneth L. Quakers on the Eastern Shore. Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1970. Evans, Charles, Friends in the Seventeenth Century. Philadelphia: Friends Book Store, i 885. Fox, George. Works ofGeorge Fox. State College PA: New Foundation Fellowship. 1988. Furnas, Seth E. A History ofIndiana Yearly Meeting [HicksiteJ. Richmond IN: Indiana Yearly Meet- ing, 1968. Gould, Marcus T.C . Sermons Delivered by Elias Hicks and Edward Hicks in Friends Meetings. New York, in Fifth Month 1825. NYC: J.V. Seaman, 1825. Hamm, Thomas D. "The Hicksite Quaker World, 1875—1900," in Quaker Historv vol. 89, no. 2, Fall2000, pp. 17-41. Hamm, Thomas D. The Transformation ofAmerican Quakerism. Bloomington IN: Indiana Univer- sity Press, 1988. Haworth, Cecil E. A Valiant People: Deep River Quarterly Meeting of Friends. Greensboro NC: NCYM Publications Board, 1976. Hills, George M. History ofthe Church in Burlington, New Jersey. Trenton NJ: W.S. Sharp Printing Co., 1885). Hinshaw, Seth Beeson. "A History of the Chesterfield Meeting House," in Friendly Notes vol. 2. no. 2(1997), pp. 2-5. Hinshaw, Seth Beeson. "Ohio General Meeting and the Primitive Friends," an address at Ohio Yearly Meeting, 1994. Hinshaw, Seth Bennett. The Carolina Quaker Experience. Greensboro NC: North Carolina Friends Historical Society, 1984. This author was the second cousin of my granddad. Hinshaw, Seth Bennett. Historical Sketches ofSouthern Quarterly Meeting ofFriends and Its Con- stituent Monthly Meetings. N.p.: North Carolina Yearly Meeting, 1943. Jackson, Sheldon G. A Short History ofKansas Yearly Meeting ofFriends. Wichita KS: Day's Print Shop, 1946. Journal of the Life and Gospel Labors of that Devoted Servant and Minister of Christ. Joseph Hoag. Sherwoods NY: David Heston, 1 860. Hodgson, William. The Society of Friends in the Nineteenth Century: A Historical View. Philadel- phia: Smith, English & Co., 1875. Ingle, H. Larry. Quakers in Conflict: The Hicksite Reformation. Knoxville TN: University of Ten- nessee Press, 1984. Jackson, Joseph B. Encyclopedia ofPhiladelphia. Harrisburg PA: National Historical Association, 1933. 191 Marietta, Jack D. The Reformation ofAmerican Quakerism. 1748—1783. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984. New Garden Quarterly Meeting of Friends (Ohio, Hicksite) 1850, Swarthmore College. O'Connor, Bill. "Akron's take-charge aristocrat [Lewis Miller],'" in the Akron Beacon Journal Online. www.ohio.com^j/projects/rubber/0 1 1 997/stories/miller.htm. Pennsviile Monthly Meeting (Ohio Orthodox) 1 833— 1 849, Ohio Yearly Meeting archives. Phips, Joseph. The Original and Present State ofMan Briefly Considered. London Yearly Meeting 1767. Punshon, John. Portrait in Grey: A Short History of the Quakers. London: Quaker Home Service, 1984. Scharf, J. Thomas and Thompson Westcott, eds. Histon> ofPhiladelphia 1609—1884. Philadelphia: L.H. Everts & Co., 1884). Schooley, William. The Journal of William Schooley. Zanesville OH: George Schooley, 1977. Short Creek Quarterly Meeting (Gumeyite) minutes, 1 856. Taber, William P. Jr. The Eye ofFaith: A History of Ohio Yearly Meeting ofFriends. Conservative. Banresville OH: Ohio Yearly Meeting, 1985. Thomas, Allen C. and Richard H. Thomas, A History ofFriends in America. Philadelphia: The John C. Winston Co., 1930. Tolles, Frederick B. Quakers cmd the Atlantic Culture. NYC: Macmillan Co., 1960. The Western Friend. 1880-1883. Williams, Peter W. Houses ofGod: Region, Religion, and Architecture in the United States. Urbana IL: University of Illinois Press, 1997. Williams, Walter R. The Rich Heritage of Quakerism. Grand Rapids Ml: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1962. Quaker Photo Collections. Baker, Lawrence etal. Celebrating the Past. Claitning our Future: A History of the First One Him- dred Years ofWilmington Yearly Meeting ofthe Religious Society ofFriends. Sabina OH: Gaskins Printing, 1991. Bedell, L. Frank. Quaker Heritage: A Story ofIowa Conservative Yearly Meeting. West Branch lA: 1966. Bonner, Ruth E. Quaker Ways: Pictures of Meeting-Houses in Current Middle-Atlantic America. Kutztown PA: Kutztown Publishing Co., 1978. Campbell Meeting House Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Cope, William L. collection, Middleton OH. Earlham College, Richmond IN. Paris, John T. Old Churches and Meeting Houses in and aroimd Philadelphia. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1926. Gentry, Martha C. and Paul Rodebaugh. Southern Chester County in Vintage Postcards. Charleston SC: Arcadia Publishing, 1999. Guilford College, New Garden NC. Hawkins, Becky, photograph collection, Columbiana, Ohio. Hayes, J. Russell. Old Meeting-Houses: With Over Fifty Illustrations. Philadelphia: Biddle Press, 1909. 192 Hayes, J. Russell. Old Quaker Meeting-Houses. Philadelphia: Biddle Press, 1911. Heiss, Willard. A BriefHistory of Western Yearly Meeting ofConservative Friends and the Separa- tion of 1877. Indianapolis IN: John Woolman Press, 1963. Hinshaw, Gregory P. Indiana Friends Heritage 1821-1996. Richmond IN: Indiana Yearly Meeting, 1996. Hinshaw, Seth Bennett and Mary E., eds. Carolina Quakers: Tercentenary 1672— 1972. Greensboro NC: North Carolina Yearly Meeting, 1972. Lancaster County Architecture 1 700—1850. Lancaster PA: Historic Preservation Trust of Lancaster County, 1992. Matlack, T. Chalkley. "An Album of Friends' Meeting Houses and Schools West of the Delaware River," Swarthmore College. Ohio Yearly Meeting archives. The Heritage Room, Bamesville OH. Puig, Francis J. "The Porches of Quaker Meeting Houses in Chester and Delaware Counties," in Pennsylvania Folklife. Winter 1974, vol. 24, no. 2, pp. 21-30. Quaker Sesqui-Centennial. 1812-1962. Damascus OH: Ohio Yearly Meeting [Damascus], 1962. Rodebaugh, Paul A. More Chester County Notebook. West Chester PA: Taggart Printing, 1990. Shortlidge, Helen W. A History ofLittle Britain Monthly Meeting ofthe Religious Society ofFriends, 1804 to 1954. Little Britain Monthly Meeting, 1996. Siskind, Aaron. Bucks County: Photographs of Early Architecture. Horizon Press, 1974. Smith, Fred E. photograph collection, Earlham College. Southall, Kenneth H. Our Quaker Heritage: Early Meeting Houses. York, England: Quaker Home Service, 1984. Walker, Pearl A. The Story ofSalem Friends from 1803 to 1973. Salem OH: 1973. Watson, John F. Annals of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, in the Olden Time. Philadelphia: E.S. Stuart Co., 1877. Wilmington Yearly Meeting: 1891—1991. Wilmington OH: Wilmington Yearly Meeting of Friends, 1991. Winona Centennial, 1869-1969: Looking Back Over the Years. Winona OH: 1969. Wood, Frank collection. The Heritage Room, Bamesville, OH. Miscellaneous Sources of Illustrations. Bartlett, Edward P. etal. Friends in Wilmington 1738—1938. Wilmington DE: Charles L. Story Company, 1938. Bastalick, Henrietta G. etal. Kennett Square: Yesterday and Today. Kennett Square PA: KNA Press, 1982. Bean, Theodore W. ed. History ofMontgomery County, Pennsylvania. Philadelphia: Everts & Peck, 1884. Bi-Centennial of Old Kennett Meeting House 1710—1910. Philadelphia: Walter H. Jenkins, 1910. Bi-Centennial Anniversary of the Friends' Meeting-House at Merion, Pennsylvania 1695—1895. Philadelphia: Friends Book Association, 1895. Browin, Frances W. A Century of Race Street Meeting House 1856—1956. Philadelphia: Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting, 1 956. Brown, Francis G. Downingtown Friends Meeting: An Early History ofQuakers in the Great Valley. Glenmoore PA: Glenmoore Corp., 1999. 19: Chambers, S.Allen. Lynchburg:,: An Architectural History. Charlottesville VA: University of Virginia Press. 1981. Cordell, Gene, photographic collection, Indianapolis, hidiana. Crownfield, Frederic R. etai. White Plains Friends Meeting. 1H50— 19H2. Greensboro NC: North Carolina Friends Historical Society, 1982. Doebley, Car! E. Lower Merion -A Portrait. Philadelphia PA: Lower Merion Historical Society, 1976. "The First Quaker Meeting House in Salem," in The Essex Antiquarian. Tenth Month i 909, vol. 1 3, no. 4, pp. 145-146. Furnas, David. "History of Miami Monthly Meeting Hicksite - From 1828 to 1903,"" in Friends Miami Monthly Meeting Centennial. Waynesville OH: Miami Monthly Meeting, 1903. Hamilton, William L. "Quaker Simple, Simply Beautiful," in The New York Times, 1/1 1/2001, p. Fl, FIG. Haworth, Cecil E. Deep River Friends. Greensboro NC: North Carolina Friends Historical Society, 1985. Hinshaw, Seth B. Friends at Holly Spring. Davidson NC: Friends Historical Society, 1982. This book was written by the second cousin of my granddad. History ofCentre Friends Meeting 1757— 1954. Greensboro NC: Centre Monthly Meeting, 1954. Jacobsen, Phebe R. Quaker Records in Maryland. Annapolis MD: Hall of Records, 1966. Lasley, Elizabeth H. Somerton Meeting: Three Hundred Years of Witness. Greensboro NC: Pied- mont Press, 1972. Littrell, Mary P. A History ofRich Square Monthly Meeting ofFriends. 1 760-1960. Woodland NC: Rich Square Monthly Meeting, 1960. Looney, Robert F. Old Philadelphia: In Early Photographs 1839—1914. NYC: Dover Publications, 1976. Mallary, Peter T. New England Churches and Meetinghouses. NYC: Vendome Press, 1 985. "Merion Friends Meeting House," report for the Historic American Buildings Survey, HABS No. Pa- 145, 1997. Mott, Frank L. "Quaker Boy," in The Palimpsest. 43 (1962) no. 7, pp. 305-326. Newlin, Algie I. Friends at the 'Spring': A History of Spring Monthly Meeting. Greensboro NC: NCFHS, 1984. The Philadelphia Record, 1912. Proceedings: Centennial Anniversary, Miami Monthly Meeting. Waynesville. Ohio. Tenth Month 16-17, 1903. Waynesville OH: 1903. Rountree, Carlton W. One Hundred Years Up the River Greensboro NC: Southern Publishers, 1 966. Sinnott, Edmund W. Meetinghouse and Church in Early New England. NYC: Bonanza Books, 1963. Stanton, William H. Our Ancestors. The Stan tons. Philadelphia: William H. Stanton, 1922. 194 1 Index. General Index. Academic Eclecticism, 103 Quakers: Alexander, William, 26 Architectural categories Anglicanism, x, 1-5, 7, 11, 15-16 Akron Plan, viii, 87, 98-100, 110, 113 Bates, Elisha, 58 175-177 Bisset, Richard L., 53 "Bank Plan," 35n Brumbaugh, G. Edwin, vii Bristol Plan, 24-28, 122-123 Butler, David M., 13-15 Center-Gabled Plan, 63-64, 109, 143 Cash, Herbert T„ 102 centralized floorplans, 14 Catholicism, 1-6, 1 Chesterfield Plan, 73, 79-82, 109, 158 Christ Church, Plymouth, 6 End-Gallery Plan, 14-16, 24, 28-29, 69, 94, Clark, Dougan, 93 117-118, 124 Denwood, Levin, 22 evangelical pastoral variant, 106, 185-186 Douglas, John H., 93 Front-Gabled Plan, 61-65, 87, 92-96, 109, English Baroque, 7 144-145, 169-170, 172-173 Fox, George, 7-8, 10-1 1, 13, 18^19, 22, 67 25, Late Ideal Plan, 87, 90-92, 109, 165 Furnas, David, 54 log MHs, 30, 44 Gill, Irving, 107, 187-188 modem MHs, 70-72, 87, 107-108. 1 10. Gothic architecture, 2-3 186, 188-189 Gothic survival, 3, 5, 16 Modified Ideal Plan, 68-69, 109, 147-148 Gregg, Caleb, 80 Neo-Classical Plan, 87, 103-104, 110. 178- Gumey, Joseph John, 76-78, 89-90 181 Guyhim Chapel, 6 Pastoral Plan, xiii, 87, 103-106, 110, 181- Haines, Zebedee, 82n 182 Harvey, Cyrus W., 96 Proto-ldeal Plan, 37-39, 128-129 Hicks, Elias, 58 Purchased Residences, 70, 148-149 Hole, Israel P., 100 Quaker Ideal Plan, 38-56, 59-60, 73, 75- Holme, Thomas and Elizabeth, 10, 30 76, 79, 83, 87-89, 91, 130-133, 140, 153, Hoover, Herbert, 88 155-156, 164-165, 167-168 Keith, George, 28-29, 31 Reduced MHs, 65, 146 Kimber, Thomas, 97 Side-Gallery Plan, 14-15, 24, 29-31, 116, Latrobe, Benjamin H., 56 126 Laud, William, 2-3, 7 Simple Doubled Plan, 35-36, 39, 59, 76, 83, Laudian Revival, 7 3, 127-128, 146, 154 Longley, 2-3 Simple Plan, 84, 160 Maule, Thomas, 24 Tripled Plan, 84-85, 161-162 Michael's Methodist Church House, 63, 142 architectural elements Miller, Lewis, 98 bell, 7 Old Ship MH, 114 6, chimneys, 28, 30, 83 Osbom, Charles, 57 cobblestone MHs, 44 Penn, William, 25 cruciform shape, 33. 62, 95, 141 Phips, Joseph, 57 cruck or bent principal rafter system, 34 Puritanism, x, xi, 1, 3-7, 11-12, 16, 114 eyebrow dormers, 65 Puritan architecture, 6-7 gabled roof, 29-30 Putnam, J. Pickering, 83 gambrel roof, 26, 28-30, 35, 37, 123, 125 garret windows, 96, 1 03 Gothic (pointed) window, 64-65. 83. 96 195 1 1 hipped roof, 14,25,29-30,64,71, 104, 159 orientation of MHs, 43-44 hoods, 45^7, 69 ornamentation of MHs. 5-7, II, 16,44,63, king-post truss system, 34 91,94,98, 102, 104 kitchens, 85 titles, 12 lantern, 14, 15n, 23-26, 122-123 unifonnity, 36, 109 pointed window (see Gothic window) womens meetings (see business meetings) porch, 45, 47^8, 84, 135-136 history porte-cochere, 64-65, 69, 83, 159 General Committee, 77, 89, 101 portico, 26-27, 45-46, 68, 103-106, 147 Manchester Conference, 8, 66-67, 101 pyramidal roof, 15, 27, 123-124 modernist movement, viii, 85, 101, 105-1 10 ramada, 71, 150 New Meeting Movement, 68-70 stained glass, 102-103 primitive movement, 57-58 steeples (belfry, cupola, spire), 6-7. 16, 71, revival movement, viii, 93-98, 113 95,98, 102, 105-106, 171, 183 Richmond Conference (1887), 101 towers, 6, 16, 95-96, 98-100, 105n, 107, shared MHs, 74-75, 88 172-174 MH interiors, 14-18, 27, 47-51 vestibule, 16,29,45^6,69,91, 105, 117, carpeting, 103, 105 133-134 clerk's table, 50 wood shingles, 30, 44 facing benches (see gallery) Branches gallery (ministers' gallery, facing benches, Conservative Friends, vii, 50n, 5 In, 53n, 81- ministers' stand), 15-16, 18, 20, 23, 27- 86,96-97, 101 29, 31, 38, 43, 48-50, 5 In, 54-55, 61, Evangelical Friends, 106-110 93, 139 Gumeyite Friends, 8, 73, 77-79, 81-83, 87- hand rails, 49 109 kneeling block, 50 Hicksite Friends, 33, 57-76. 82, 88, 91, 96, kneeling rails, 49 99, 109 ministers' gallery (see gallery) Keithian Friends, 24, 28-29, 31-32 ministers' stand (see gallery) Liberal Friends, 5 In, 66-72, 86, 109-110 mourners' benches, 93 Neo-Wilburites, 86 partition, 32, 35, 48^9, 51.81 Orthodox Friends, 8, 58-59, 73-108 pulpit, xi, 3, 6-7, 95, 103-105, 107 Pastoral Friends, 73, 105-108 sounding board, 18, 50, 55 Primitive Friends, 76, 78-80, 88, 90, 96, 135. youth's gallery, 51, 56, 63, 139 160 recognized gifts Progressive Friends, 60-62, 141 Assistant Clerk, 54 Wilburite Friends, 73-89, 96-97, 99, 101, Clerks, 18. 54-55 109-110 elders (recognized elders), 18, 31, 50. 53, doctrine 61,93 baptism, 9, 12, 100 ministers (recorded ministers, public Church, 4, 11, 19, 102 Friends). 11-12. 14, 18,20-21,27,50- communion, 2, 4, 9, 12, 100 52, 61,96-97, 108 Inner Light, 9, 67, 70 overseers, 1 8, 50 Light of Christ, 9 public Friends (see ministers) prayer, 2, 5, 8, 10, 45, 49, 52-54, 93, 97 recognized elders (see elders) sacred architectural space, x, xi, 4, 17 recorded ministers (see ministers) saint, 4, 1 timers, 52, 54 "word," 12 secondary resources, 4 1-43 folkways horse sheds. 41-42, 131, 135 business meetings, 17-20, 22, 31-32, 34- burial grounds, 41-43 35,45,54-55,61,67, 83,97 schools, 41^2 calendar, 1 upping blocks, 47 meeting house, 4-5, 11,13 wall around meeting property, 27, 41^2 messengers, 54-55 196 7 worship, 10-11,41 Smith, George, 33 sennon, 12 Spray, Wilson, 97 singing, 8, 10, 52, 61, 93 Story, John, 19 "sing-song" ministry, 52 Turner, Robert, 32 testimony, 10, 52 Updegraft; David B., 93, 100 Rickman, Thomas, 16 Wilbur, John, 77, 89 Rogers, Mary H., 93 Wilkinson, John, 19 Sanders, Amos, 103 Wood, Carolena M., 102 Schooley, William, 60-61 Wren, Christopher, 7, 1 Service, Alastair, 5 Meeting House Index. Name of meeting house and state (or major city). Adderbury, England, 15, 116 Chester, Pennsylvania, 83 Alliance, Ohio, 99, 107, 186 Chesterfield, New Jersey, 40, 76, 154 Arch Street, Philadelphia, 42n, 55-56, 137 Chesterfield, Ohio, 78-80, 154 Archdale, North Carolina, 105, 181 Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, 68, 147 Asheboro, North Carolina, 106, 184 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, 39, 131 Asheboro Street, North Carolina, 103, 179 Cleveland, Ohio, 70 Atlanta, Georgia, 70, 149 Coal Creek, Iowa, xi Augusta, Georgia, 70 Coatesville, Pennsylvania, 83, 159 Back Creek, Indiana, 45 Colchester, England, 17 Bank, Philadelphia, 26-28, 30, 32, 35n, 41-^2, Colthouse, England, 16, 117 46, 123 Concord, Ohio, 66 Barton, England, 15 Damascus, Ohio, 88, 93, 164, 168 Beach Haven, New Jersey, 83 Downingtown, Pennsylvania, 28, 43, 48 Berkeley, California, 107, 187 Dublin, Indiana, 91 Bethany, North Carolina, 94, 170 Earls Colne, England. 15 Bethel, North Carolina, 105, 183 Eutaw Street, Baltimore, 94, 169 Betty's Cove, Maryland, 22 Evesham, New Jersey, 37 Bristol, England, 14-15, 24-25, 116 Evening, Philadelphia, 26-27, 30-31 Broad Campden, England, 16, 19 Exeter, Pennsylvania, 39, 130 Buckingham, Pennsylvania, 39 Fair Hill, Philadelphia, 30, 64, 144 Buena Vista, Indiana, 95, 171 Fairhope, Alabama, 79 Burlington, New Jersey, 23, 59, 119 Fairmount, Indiana, 89 Caesar's Creek, Ohio, xi Fallsington, Pennsylvania, 76 Cain, Pennsylvania, xii, 38-39, 82, 86, 130, 132 Faringdon, England, 16, 118 Cambridge, Massachusetts, 68-69 Farmland, Indiana, 96, 99, 173, 177 Camden, Delaware, 30 Flushing, New York, 30, 125 Cane Creek, North Carolina, 105, 182 Fountain City, Indiana, 100 Carlisle, England, 13 Frankford, Pennsylvania, 44 Canton, Ohio, 106, 108, 189 Gildencroft, England, 17 Catawissa, Pennsylvania, 44 Girard Avenue, Philadelphia, 64 Cecil, Maryland, 30, 126 Glenwood, North Carolina, 106 Center Square, Philadelphia, 27 Goldsboro, North Carolina, 99 Centre, North Carolina, 28 Goshen, Pennsylvania, xi Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 69 Greensboro, North Carolina, 106 Charleston, South Carolina, 25-26, 122 Grove, Ohio, 61 121 Charlotte, North Carolina, 70 Great, Newport, Rhode Island, xi, 25, 49. Cherry Street, Philadelphia, 59-60, 62, 140 Great, Philadelphia, 24-25, 35 197 Greater, Philadelphia, 35-36, 53, 56, 128, 134 Orange Street, Philadelphia, 47 Green Plains, Ohio, 60 Orchard Park, New York, 47, 136 Green Street, Philadelphia, 60 Oskaloosa, Iowa, 104, 181 Haddonfield, New Jersey, 35, 127 Pasadena, California, 73, 85, 162 Hardwick, New Jersey, 37, 129 Paullina, Iowa, 80n Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 69, 147 Peel, England, 20 Hartland, New York, 44 Pennsville, Ohio, 79-80, 84 Hertford, England, 13-14, 115 Phoenix, Arizona, 71, 150 Hickory Grove, Iowa, 81, 156 89, Pine Hill, North Carolina, 105, 183 High Point, North Carolina, 91, 103-104, 166, 178 Pine Street, Philadelphia, 28, 36, 42n, 123 Holly Spring, North Carolina, 48, 79, 92 Plainfield, Ohio, 66, 146 Homeville, Pennsylvania, 59 Plumstead, Pennsylvania, 65-66 Hopewell, Iowa, 80n Poplar Ridge, New York, 47, 79, 135 Hopewell, Ohio, 80 Preston Patrick, England, 16 Horsleydown, England, 17 Providence, North Carolina, 92, 105, 167 Howland, Ohio, 106, 185 Pueblo, California, 107, 188 Hullavington, England, 13 Race Street, Philadelphia, 42, 62-64, 141-142 Hunting Creek, North Carolina, 105 Radnor, Pennsylvania, 34-35, 37, 127 Jackson, Ohio, 108 Raleigh, North Carolina, 70, 148 Jacksonville, New York, 84, 1 60 Ramona Park, California, 107, 187 Jericho, New York, 43 Rancocas, New Jersey, 44 Jonesboro, Indiana, 96, 174 Reading, Pennsylvania, 64-65, 144 Keithian, Philadelphia, 28-29, 124 Richland, Ohio, 74-75, 153 Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, 64, 69, 148 Richmond, Indiana, 63-64, 90-91, 93-94, 143, Kingston, England, 18 168 Lancaster, England, 17 Ridge, Ohio, 85, 161 Lawrence, Kansas, 91-92, 166 Roaring Creek, Pennsylvania, 44 Little Egg Harbor, New Jersey, 29, 125 Rocky River, North Carolina, 105 Live Oak, Texas, 72, 152 Sadsbury, Pennsylvania, 28, 124 Longwood, Pennsylvania, 42, 61, 141 Salem, Massachusetts, 23-24, 120 Lynn, Iowa, 80 Salem, New Jersey, 32, 40 Makefield, Pennsylvania, 39 Salem, Ohio, 75, 81, 157 Mansfield, New Jersey, 37 Salem First Friends, Ohio, 106, 186 Merion, Pennsylvania, xi-xii, 32-35, 62, 126 Salem Southeast, Ohio, 106, 185 Middleton, Ohio, 73, 84-85, 161, 163 Sandwich, Massachusetts, 133 Mount Airy, North Carolina, vii-viii, 99, 113 Sandy Spring, Ohio, 61 Mount Pleasant, Ohio, xi, 49, 56, 82, 139 Seattle, Washington, 103, 178 Nassawaddox, Virginia, 13, 22 Short Creek, Ohio, 59, 146 New Castle, Indiana, 104, 180 South Fork, North Carolina, 92, 107, 188 New Garden, Indiana, 89, 95, 165 South River, Iowa, xi New Garden, North Carolina, 56, 138 South River, Virginia, 37, 129 New Garden, Pennsylvania, 43 South Wabash, Indiana, 96, 1 72 New Lisbon, Ohio, 61 Southampton, Pennsylvania, 71, 151 Newberg, Oregon, 99, 126 Spiceland, Indiana, 45, 91, 132, 165 Newport, Rhode Island, see Great MH Spring River, Kansas, 96 Norristown, Pennsylvania, 95, 102, 133, 170 Spnngfield, North Carolina, 105-106 North Meadow, Indiana, 70, 149 Springfield, Pennsylvania, 37, 128 North Pembroke, Massachusetts, 1 34 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, 47 Nottingham & Little Britain, Pennsylvania, 75, 153 Stavanger, Iowa, 84, 160 Old Kennett, Pennsylvania, 29-30, 35 Stillwater, Ohio, vii-viii, 49, 82, 113 Old Springfield, New Jersey, 28 Stourbridge, England, 16, 118 Orange Grove, California, 71, 150 Strickland, England, 15 198 Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, 65 West Milton, Ohio, xii, 95, 171 Third Haven, Maryland, 22, 44, 119 West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 83, 158-159 Trenton, Jersey, 35 New West Richmond, Indiana, 103-104, 179 Tucson, Arizona, 71 West River, Indiana, 96, 100, 173 Twelfth Street, Philadelphia, 47, 134 Westland, Ohio, 66 Upper Springfield, Ohio, 88, 164 Wheatland, New York, 44 Valley, Pennsylvania, 47, 64 White River, Indiana, 75, 100, 177 Van Wert, Ohio, 95 Whitewater, Indiana, 56, 138 Vandalia, Michigan, 95, 172 Whittier, California, 99, 176 Warwick, England, 15 Wigton, England, 13, 17 West, Ohio, 59, 140 Wilmington, Delaware, 25-26, 122 West Branch, Iowa, 81, 88, 155 Winchester, Indiana, 98-99, 175 West Cedar, Iowa, 81 Winona, Ohio, 47, 82, 107, 135, 189 West Chester, Pennsylvania, 64, 143 Winston-Salem, North Carolina, 104, 180 West Grove, North Carolina, 82, 158 Wymondham, England, 15 West Grove, Pennsylvania, 65, 82n, 83, 145, 159 Yardley, Pennsylvania, 65, 145 199 FISHER SEP 12 2001 U.'MiV. Or PENNA. N/ll'^fl/D3D5T/^TSDX -••HinniniiHiniiniHII